


The Planets Bend Between Us

by jessie_5_c



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Camp Jaha | Arkadia, Caves, F/F, F/M, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Murphy, Survival, Tags May Change, The 100 (TV) Season 3, The 100 (TV) Season 4, The 100 (TV) Season 5, The 100 (TV) Season 6, The 100 (TV) Season 7 Speculation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:55:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25088791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessie_5_c/pseuds/jessie_5_c
Summary: While the world around them was constantly changing and forcing them to adapt, it was the quiet days in the woods, in space or hidden behind their bedroom doors of Sanctum’s Palace where Murphy and Emori build the foundation to their forever.
Relationships: Abby Griffin/Marcus Kane, Bellamy Blake/Echo, Emori/John Murphy (The 100), Monty Green/Harper McIntyre
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14





	1. The Caves: Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome.  
> This is my first fiction in the 100 fandom, my first fiction I posted since more than 5 years. So please be kind.

John Murphy does not do trust. He knows, that if you believe in somebody else than yourself, you are set up for disappointment. There has been only three people in his life he ever trusted. His dad, who died even if he promised everything would be fine again as little John lay in bed, feverish and tired. His mom, who should have loved him without conditions, even after his father died for him. And then there had been Bellamy on those first days on the ground, but Murphy would never ever admit to that. Because really, Murphy knew that trust was for dumbasses, and he might be a lot of things, but he was not stupid enough to ever believe in somebody else again. But why, exactly, did he follow this girl like a lost little puppy? What was it about her, her lies and cons and her stupid truthful cheeky smile, that had him go mugwort?  
  
Overall, she was still a grounder bitch and he really did not like those guys, since they held him captive and made human bio warfare out of him. But on the other side she was a castout, just like him. She held him at knifepoint and knocked him out, but she told him to go north and after he went, she found him again, and she kissed his cheek like he was worth something. Back at the Dropship and at Camp Jaha nobody even looked at him like we were worth more than the dirt under their shoes. Dramatic much, huh Murphy? But it was kinda the truth. After Bellamy got involved with the princess of the arc, gone was his whatever we want attitude and he became her good little soldier. Murphy got it, he really did. Bellamy and Clark had something in common: both wanted to keep their people safe. Too bad he was not one of them. Murphy did not know how it would feel to call somebody your people. He looked at Emori, her hair rocked with the wind, while she maneuvered them over the quiet ocean. She held her back straight, her hands on the steering wheel, but every so often her gaze shifted sideways to where he leaned against the reeling. He did not exactly feel safe, but he was content to stand here, listen to the smallest of waves and the wind, the rustling of Emoris head scarf. Who would have thought, that the ground had to offer contentment like this? Certainly not him. For the past four month since the Dropship touched the ground he felt like he was constantly on edge, not one moment of rest. But he was kinda resting know, wasn‘t he?.  
  
"It will be a few hours until we reach the shore", Emori said after a while, "you want to have a go at steering? Wanna rest for a while."  
"I don't know", he said slowly. He does not trust her, but maybe he trusts her to get them safely to the other side of the ocean. The concept of open water was still new to him, he could not even swim. So he really was not keen to try to steer this boat and fuck it up while he was at it.  
"John, come here. It's easy." She did not voice it as a command, Murphy was not good at following those either way. But he felt like she was consoling him, like a calm owner to his scared dog. Enough with the mud metaphors, he never even saw a real one, but as a kid he liked the old children book about those little police dogs, his father read to him every so often. Kudos to the random original arc member who took his kids book to space. Oddly there had been a lot of books on the arc, books of all genres and since his mom was working at the library little John had been a champ at reading comprehension. He wondered if there were any books left on the ground. Maybe he could ask Emori about it.  
"You did not take the chip right?" Emori asked, a little fear in her voice. "You just spaced out. You know, it would be no good if you took it."  
"I won't take it." He wanted to tell her about ALIE and everything he got to know in the lighthouse bunker. Maybe he even wanted to tell her that he nearly killed himself. But he did not trust her, he would never, so he told her nothing. He just went up to her and grabbed for the steering wheel.  
  
oo oo oo oo oo oo  
  
When both of them could spot the shore Emori took over reins again and maneuvered them to where the water was deep enough for the bottom of the boat to not touch the ground but not too deep for them to get to the shore without the need to swim. Murphy was glad to not have to try if he would drown before he figured out how to move his legs and arms. Both of their clothes were wet though and Murphy was shivering as soon as the first breeze of cold air hit his body.  
"Let’s go", Emori said, after she was done doing what she did to secure her boat to some big stone near the shore.  
"Are you just leaving your stolen boat, Emori?"  
"Don't worry. Too much tech for most. They are too afraid of the mountain man killing them for using it."  
"You are not afraid of the mountain man?", Murphy asked while they made their way over the beach to the woods. He wasn`t sure, if he had been here before but he would guess he hasn't. Sometimes memories of the days after Bellamy and Clarke cast him out of the camp were to fuzzy to remember which parts he took. Maybe he had run up here and just missed that there was an ocean ahead of him.  
"I'm not afraid of anybody", Emori lied but Murphy had the courtesy not to accuse her.  
"Where are we going?" he asked instead, but even though she didn't answer he followed her for miles. He stopped shivering halfway, his clothes nearly dry but still cold and clammy. He was just short of asking for a break, just a few minutes to catch his breath and rest his tired legs, when Emori stopped right before a little stony mountain. He wasn't used to walking this much after spending all this time without any real exercise in the bunker. He rested is arms on his knees and took some deep breaths. Murphy looked up just at the right time, when Emori was finished pushing aside moss, lichens and branches to uncover the entrance of a cave. He followed her through the small opening and sunk down the stony wall on the inside. The cave was bigger than he thought and he instantly felt warmer than he had for the past hours.  
"You stay here. I'll bring grub", Emori said, but didn't wait for his confirmation. Murphy just considered his options for a minute, but really, where could he go? He still had no clue where he was, how far away from Camp Jaha or any freaking grounder village he wouldn't want to ran into. And even if he knew how to get back to what was left of the arc, why would they even welcome him back? He left in the midst of sweeping floors as a punishment for being a dumb kid, bet Kane wouldn't be happy to see him three months later and without a mop in his hands. Even worse, without Jaha. With his luck, they would accuse him of murdering the crazy fuck. No, going back to Camp was no option. He decided to stay, just for a while. Emori had pushed some of the branches back, so nobody would see the entrance of the cave, if not looking too closely. It was pretty dark in here, since the sun seemed to set outside. Murphy slid done a little with his back still against the stone wall. He struck his legs straight out in front of himself and folded his arms in front of his chest. He would just close his eyes for a bit. Hopefully no grounder except for Emori would find him here, and yeah, chances were, she wouldn't be back. Murphy wouldn't even be surprised. He was thankful she took him along until here and maybe found the most secured spot in this forest for him to rest.  
  
oo oo oo oo oo oo 

Emori came back, bearing some berries, nuts and a medium sized dead rabbit. In the haze of waking to a nearly dark cave, the sun must have fully set and the moon just shone a small amount of light through the entrance of the cave, Murphy felt like a baby bird who had waited patiently in his nest for his mother to bring worms. A blessing Emori might not be too keen on eating worms herself. In her bigger arm with the badass hand Emori held some small logs. She put them into the middle of the cave, laid the food next to it and just left the cave for a few moments without saying a word. She came back with some branches and leaves and arranged them between the logs. Out of one pocket of some of her many layers of clothes she conjured a edgy stone and a shining piece of steel. It didn't take her a minute until the first spark hit the improvised tinder and soon a small fire was burning in the middle of their cave. Emori grabbed the rabbit, took a knife out of another of her many pockets and motioned Murphy to come over.  
"Tonight, I'll do it. From tomorrow on this is your job. So look!" Murphy looked closely how she first skinned the rabbit and then gutted it. She was pretty resourceful. It was extraordinary how her disability didn't hinder her a steering a boat, staging cons and surviving in the woods. She didn't believe the whole mumbojumbo about not using tech and even if she might be scared about things she wouldn't admit to, she also might be the most couraged woman he ever knew. Clark, Raven and even Octavia couldn‘t compete with her in the slightest. Maybe he accidently found the most badass girl there was on the ground or maybe he just thought she was really hot right now. Murphy never had the hots for any girl before. He would never openly admit it but Emoris small little kiss to his cheek was the first affection any girl ever showed to him. Being seventeen and a virgin was kinda embarrassing, but not everybody had threesomes on their mind as soon their feet touched the ground. From the very first moment he stepped out of the dropship a nervous energy settled deep in his gut. He hadn‘t known what it meant and it took him a hanging and some lonely starving days in the forest to identify the feeling as a deep, inherent will to survive.  
  
Because of this instinct and a lot of other wonderful reasons like being tortured by feral grounders or getting locked into a isolated bunker for 86 days, Murphy just knew he could never trust again, but with Emori nothing needed to be about trust. She was his best chance at survival and she seemed to like him enough to keep him for the time being. That was a new sensation in and on it‘s own.  
When all innards were removed, Emori grabbed for one long branch of wood she hadn‘t put into the fire. She sharpened the stick with her knife and impaled the rabbit on it to roast it over the fire. Murphy sat down next to her and she gave him the stick to grab the nuts and berries off of the rocky cave ground.  
She put some of the small nubs into her own mouth before holding out a red little berry between the tips of her fingers of her not-so-badass-hand.  
"Here“, she said and motioned for him to open his mouth. Murphy hesitated for just a moment but he held the stick steady with both hands, so the meat stayed in just the right distance to the flame to not scorch. He didn‘t want to jinx their meal so he opened up his mouth just a tiny bit and accepted the berry from between Emoris fingers. It was juicy and just a little bit sweet, and Emoris fingertips brushed lightly across his upper lip. She continued to feed herself and him the handful of nuts and berries she had found. Murphy was still hungry after, maybe more than before, because those little bearings of hers might have been the yummiest thing he had ever tasted. It had absolutely nothing to do with being handfeed by the hottest girl he knew.  
  
When Emori told him, that the rabbit must be ready, Murphy put the stick away from the fire. He just waited a few minutes for the meat to cool down, before holding the stick out to Emori for her to take the first bite. Instead of grabbing for the stick she just leaned forward and bit into the tender meat.  
"It‘s good“, she said, "Must‘ve been young still.“  
Murphy let her have another bite before trying it himself. It really was tender on the inside, the outside just had a little bit of crust from being roasted over the open flame. But the best thing was, that the meat warmed his body from the inside out. Murphy was pretty sure he never had a better meal.  
  
After they shared the last of the rabbit meat, Emori shed one of the outer layers of clothes and bundled them up under her head, before she lay down with her back to the wall of the cave.  
"Tomorrow I‘ll find us water. And more food. Now we sleep.“  
"Shouldn‘t I take watch or something?“, Murphy asked. That‘s what people, who are not alone on the ground, did, wasn‘t it?  
"No, sleep John. It‘s secure here. I’m a light sleeper.“  
Murphy lay down, with his head pillowed in his arm. The ground was hard, harder even than the nights he slept in the forest. Yet the sound of Emoris calm and steady breaths lulled him to sleep.


	2. The Caves: Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy 😊

The first time Murphy woke that night, was by the cries of nocturnal birds. He still wasn‘t used to the sounds of the ground. He still mistook leaves rustling in the wind for quiet whispers in a strange language. Maybe he should get Emori to teach him her tongue, so the winds murmur wouldn‘t wake him at night. But what use would it be? He still had his nightmares and he woke up, because he was freezing or hungry or because he dreamed of being tortured by Emoris people, except they weren't her people, weren't they? As he lay awake for the second time of the night, he looked at Emoris back and wondered if she got night terrors too. But for now, she slept peacefully and the night was dark and cold so he willed himself to sleep too.   
  
He woke two more times that night, freezing because the fire was no longer burning and with a dry mouth. He was pleased to notice the sound of falling rain from outside the cave. Murphy got up and put the hood of his jacket over his head before heading out of the cave. He put his head back and opened his mouth to catch the falling raindrops with his tongue. That was how Emori found him seconds later. She was a stealthy little thing and he was tired still, so he hadn't noticed that she followed him. She did what he did and side by side they drank from the rain, until they were soaked but sated.   
They went back inside and sat down a few feet apart from each other. Outside it was still mostly dark and his clothes clung to his skin. He put his arms around his knees but couldn't stop his teeth from chattering. He was really fucking cold. Murphy remembered growing up on the ark. Often times it was cold there too and he had been a rather sickly kid. After puberty hit, he didn't get sick that often but he still felt the cold in his cell more heavily than most of the other inmates he knew. Mbege did laugh at him but when he got really bad and his teeth would chatter at night, he sometimes threw him his own blanket, so Murphy would shut up and let them both go to sleep. Mbege was an asshole but Murphy missed him.   
“You’re freezing“, Emori stated. "We can‘t start a fire right now. The wood‘s to wet.“  
"Yeah, no prob“, he said through still chattering teeth.   
"Right“, Emori huffed and Murphy would have thought it was sweet, if he wasn‘t freezing to death. Going out for a drink in the rain was a dumb decision. Murphy put his forehead to his knees and closed his eyes.   
"It‘s January, right?“, he murmured. They came down in first half of September he remembered.   
"I don‘t know“, Emori answered and he heard how she stood up and walked over to him. „Winter is almost over.“  
Emori sat down next to him, he even felt a bit of her body heat. How she could be soaked to the bone just like him but still radiate such warmth was beyond him. Must have been because she was desert born.   
"Look, I have a plan“, she told him quietly, "When the sun comes up we walk to where the forest is not that thick. There are roads to Polis. Lots of people go there day by day. Merchants if we are lucky. You and I, we can steal from them. Maybe get you some warmer jacket. Even a blanket or some furs.“  
"Sounds good“, he said, a little sleepy again. Her body heat and the sound of her voice lulled him back to sleep.   
"Great John, than it‘s a plan“, he heard her say, before he drifted off.   
  
oo oo oo oo oo oo  
  
The road to Polis was just a trail but not long after he and Emori hide behind some bushes, they saw the first merchants with heavy loaded carts walk by. When they were out of earshot, Emori took the glove off of her badass hand and picked into her own finger with her little knife. She held his chin with the fingers of her right hand and touched his cheeks and forehead with the bleeding badass one. It felt rough and he wasn‘t sure if she felt comfortable touching him like this. He thought it was pretty intimate but crazy too, because soon he had her blood all over his face.   
"Take off your shirt“, she ordered and he did as told. He took of his jacket and his shirt and gave it to her.   
"Okay“, Emori said, „now you lay down there. Just like I told you last night.“ He must‘ve been half asleep when she told him the rest of the plan. But he got it. He was to play bait and hopefully no grounder walking by would kill him for real just to get his shoes.   
"I‘ll protect you“, Emori promised and Murphy was agitated by how easily he placed his trust in her.   
"Yeah yeah yeah“, he murmured just get a point but he lay down on the slightly damp pathway, willed his body to slack and closed his eyes. Hopefully he looked dead enough.   
  
While he lay there, waiting for anybody to cross the road, he wondered where he would be right now if he never left camp with Jaha. Most probably scrubbing floors again because he couldn‘t contain his tongue. Murphy was almost certain he would‘ve never been a guard or whatever they‘ll choose to name their soldiers on the ground. He might know the ground, maybe even better than most of the others, he was young and kind of fit, he might even learn to handle a gun the right way, if taught accordingly. But he wasn‘t like Bellamy or Miller, who could follow orders if they were in the right environment and he wasn‘t like Octavia or Clarke either, who could give them and be heard in the right circumstances. He supposed he would have been considered a loose cannon back in camp, nobody would ever give him a weapon and most probably he would not leave the insides of the camp very much. Maybe he would have gotten other assessments by now, could have learned to pull his weight by like kitchen duty or something. He wasn’t a genius like Raven and Monty, so no to engineering or machinery. Either way, Murphy knew who he would have been, if he stayed back when Jaha asked him to come along on this suicide mission to find the freaking city of lights, and who he was now were two completely different persons. He just hoped he made the right decisions by the means of survival. Murphy, still with his eyes closed, willed himself to visualize Emori crouching behind the bushes, her knife in the smaller of both hands and her gaze on his half naked and dirty body. He might have been more than wary of the friendship Kane and Octavia wanted to build with the grounders, but maybe now he got them. He was reliant on Emori protecting his body. With her he was safer out here. Maybe Kane and Octavia just understood this earlier than him. God, Murphy thought, listen to his voice of reason. And it only took one ground-born girl to get him to realize, that maybe where you were born didn‘t define if you were friend or foe.   
  
It felt like the waited for hours, until he heard the heavy footsteps of someone approaching him, while in fact in might have been more like one hour tops. His body felt cold from lying on the slightly damp ground and his muscles hurt, because it took him a lot of self-control to stay relaxed like this. His whole instincts told him to run, but he willed himself to stay where he was. Emori was there, he told himself silently, she was there, she was there. His pathetic mantra distracted him from the nearing grounder. Much too soon he felt hands on his neck, checking for pulse, but before the foreigner processed, that Murphy wasn't a corpse, Emori had the guy at knifepoint. Man, she was really badass.   
"Sorry", he heard her say, "this one's mine."  
  
Murphy felt the grounders hands leave his neck. Instantly he jumped up, his heart beating like crazy and he felt like throwing up. What he did just now, laying there instead of running, instead of fighting, instead of everything his most primal instincts where telling him to do, was close to the stupidest thing he had ever done. Fuck, Murphy thought, he trusted Emori to watch out for him. He trusted her. How dumb could he be. Murphy didn't do trust. His heart was beating even faster, he started to feel dizzy, but then there was Emoris voice, clear and determined.   
"Take his bag", she told him, while lightly shoving the guy. "And his coat. Come ona. Teik em off." The grounder, bigger and almost twice as heavy as her, did as told. He took of his long coat and he didn't put up a fight, when Murphy grabbed for it and took his bag. He stepped back, slinging the strap over his shoulder, just as Emori knocked her elbow hard against the grounder-guys temple.  
"Run, John", he heard her say, as the man slumped down to the ground.   
  
oo oo oo oo oo oo  
  
It really was beyond him, how someone so little as her, could be that fierce. They had run through the forest, until his legs hurt and he had trouble breathing. He leaned against a tree and dry heaved. He felt Emoris gaze on his still naked back.   
"Come on, John. I know where we can get some water", she said and suddenly the fingers of her small hand where touching his. He grabbed at her, just to steady himself and because it felt like an offering. It was so long ago, that somebody had to offer him something worthwhile. As he followed her, with their hands intertwined, he was almost certain that whatever she had to offer him, was worth every risk he took that day.   
  
They found a small stream just over half a mile away. Right in front of the water both of them sunk down to their knees. Instantly they cupped their hands and drunk the clear and cold water. It did wonders to his still rebelling stomach and his heavy beating heart. Murphy remained kneeling, the fingers of one hand still in the lightly streaming water. It was soothing.   
"You good now, John?"  
"Yeah", he said quietly and them stronger, his usual waggishness almost fully back again, "Never been better."  
"You're a bad liar", she huffed and got up. She grabbed at the bag, still slung over his naked shoulder. "Let’s see what we got." She opened the pouch and retrieved dried meat, slung into some linen cloths, some big nuts, a loaf of bread, a leather bottle, a rather big knife, just a tang smaller than hers, and two dozen small sacs with strongly flavored spicery.   
"He was a spice merchant", Emori said and Murphy couldn't contain his laughter. He almost shit his pants because of a freaking marketeer.   
  
“I have a plan”, Emori told him, exactly like last night. Murphy sat still, his hand was still playing with the water and his heartbeat was almost back to normal. It was stupid, but sitting here, across from Emori, made him feel calmer. Her presence was as soothing as the cold water on his fingertips. “We can eat the nuts. And we rest for a bit. Then I want to follow the stream to a deeper part. We can wash there. On the way let’s find some more nuts and berries. We need to find firewood and a cave for the night. But that will be easy. There a lots around here.”  
  
Murphy and Emori shared the nuts. They were only slightly bigger than the ones she brought yesterday and tasted more bitter, but they were filling. After their little meal Murphy put his upper clothes back on and followed Emori along the shore until they reached the part, where the stream turned into a small lake. Emori took of most of her outerwear and walked into the water in just a thin top and some small trousers she wore as undergarment. She did a quick job of cleaning her body and when she emerged her former light brown skin seemed now more olive. Her dark hair was wet and open. She looked older without her bandana and tamer. Her facial tattoo screamed grounder and her deformed hand was a telltale sign of a destructed world but in fact, she only looked like a woman. A hot woman, clearly. But a woman, small and petite, with subtle curves and a serene look on her face. In space Murphy always thought water was a wild thing. He remembered reading a book about the ocean, about sharks and other sea animals. The water was constantly moving, ebb and flow and then there were waves, wild and heavy until the water reaches the shore and maybe left shells in it‘s wake. Murphy never thought that water could have a calming effect. But while he looked at Emori and still felt the phantom-cold water on his fingertips he knew how soothing it could be. Murphy really would‘ve liked to join Emori in the lake, but it was cold and he was afraid of drowning, so he stayed behind by the shore and watched her emerge from the water.  
She took one of her many layers of clothes to dry her skin before clothing herself again. She tied her bandana around the wrist of her small hand and used her fingers to comb through her hair.   
Murphy sat next to her, after he did a quick job of cleaning his face from the remnants of her blood and debris from the ground he lay on.   
  
“When the weather is warmer, we can go swimming”, Emori said and she sounded so young. Like she really needed a friend. She looked at him, not from the corner of her eye, like he would, but fully, her face clean and clear. She was really beautiful. And she said spring, which was a few months away, like she wants him to stay. Murphy, in a moment of courage, took her small hand in his.   
“Yeah”, he said. Murphy learned so much about surviving on the ground and he was pretty sure, she wouldn’t let him drown, when they went swimming in spring. So for the first time in forever he was pretty enthusiastic in what the future could hold for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your kudos!   
> I would love to hear from you 😊


	3. The Caves Part III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s another one 😊
> 
> Thanks for the Kudos. I’d love to hear how you like it.

They developed a routine over the next few day. Murphy was the first to wake, just as the sun begun to emerge behind the trees. He supposed it was pretty late in the morning but they always went to sleep in the middle of the night. After getting up he left the latest cave they found and looked for fire wood, nuts, herbs and berries. When he brought his bearing, Emori was awake to and had a fire burning in a couple of seconds. They ate berries and nuts and whatever they had left from the coup of the day before. Sometimes dried meat, cheese or some bread. One time they even got dried fruits. They were the sweetest thing Murphy ever tasted. They also got a little pot a few days ago and every morning they boiled water in it and if they had herbs, they made tea out of it. Sometimes Murphy added some of the spices from their first coup. There had been quite a few interesting combinations. One time he even added berries and it had been awesome. But it was winter still and most of the time they only got a handful of them, so there were no berries to spare for tea.  
With his stolen jacket, one of the two woolen blankets they got the day before yesterday and the hot tea Murphy didn’t felt the cold like he did the first few days Emori let him tag along.   
  
In the morning they never talked much, they shared tea and whatever they dug up for breakfast. Murphy and Emori left the cave without putting out the fire, because most days they had no water to spare. Right now, all their stolen belonging did fit into two equally stolen bags, so they took everything. Together they looked for a good spot to stage the next coup. Murphy always played bait. Maybe Emori didn't trust him enough to watch out for her. Maybe he just was better at playing dead, Murphy tried not to think too much about it. By now he was calmer after the coup, his heart still racing and he had to puke once or twice after their encounter nearly went sideways, but he pulled himself together in a matter of seconds and Emori and him were on the run with whatever they could carry. They always looked for a cave after or an old subway station. On the way, they filled their water containers and took whatever berries, nuts or other eatable things the forest had to offer. Emori had shown him how to hunt and every evening before the sun set, they tried to hunt some rabbit, rat or whatever rodent they came across, if the victim of the day didn't had enough food for them to steal. Back in the cave, with a fire burning, Murphy contemplated what food might fit and threw together whatever sounded good in his head. He really loved to try out the spices from their first coup and more often than not the food was really good. Emori said, she had never eaten better than with him. He tried to do well every evening because he really started to like food and if Emori was especially pleased with her dinner she gave him a kiss on the cheek.   
  
After their meal it was dark outside, the sun had set long ago and they went outside and lay on the ground to watch the stars in the spaces between the canopy. Emori started their new evening tradition a few days ago. She expected him to tell her about constellations and planets. She even asked him, if there were other lifeforms up there. Emori told him, that sometimes when she has been stealing tech with her brother, she found books. She couldn't read very well in English, because her brother taught her and he was really bad too, but she understood, that the universe was bigger than she could imagine and that prior to the bombs that destroyed the earth people believed, that there had to be something out there.   
"That's why your people went to space right? They wanted to explore", she said into the night.   
"Yeah, maybe. I think it was about politics and science stuff." Murphy just had a few years of education before he was thrown into the skybox and after his father died, he wasn't the most attentive student, but he still remembered reading about the solar system, about stars and astronauts in the children's book his mother got him from the arks library sometimes. He would never consider himself an expert of astrophysical science or whatever stuff Raven Reyes was into, but it was enough for bedtimes stories to the girl he had the hots for. So Murphy told her about the planets he knew. He remembered only because his father taught him in the order of size by saying: "Johnny Sailed Upwards Nine Epic Moonlight Miles". So what, Alex Murphy was cheesy like that.   
"I want a saying with my name, too. So I can remember them forever", Emori said matter of factly. "Can you find me one?"   
"I am not good at that", he told her and sat up abruptly. It was dumb to share these memories with her. He wasn't a dumb kid anymore. "It's not important either way. Space sucks."   
"Why are you like that, John?" He didn't offer her an explanation, he just stood up and went into the woods. He was glad she didn't come after him, because he was angry, at himself and the galaxy, and sorry for being like that to Emori at the same time. Not a good mix. Murphy and her had a good time until now. Emori was pretty easy going, she always had some kind of plan and surviving on the ground had never been this fun until he met her. She was nice to him, sweet and attentive but she gave him space and silence if he needed it. Murphy never met anyone who was so in sync with him, they really fit, almost like two pieces of an age-old puzzle. But he couldn't get out of his own skin. After all this death and betrayal, the hurt and the loneliness in his life, he had nothing to offer her. No trust, no life after the woods, not even that first kiss, he so desperately wanted to share with her. Emori told him, they couldn't stage those coups much longer, people started to be more heavily armed already and sometimes while they were on the lookout behind some bushes, they could hear travelers talk about the thieves in the woods. They had to stop long before spring filled the bushes with berries and lured animals out of their winter quarters. And what should they do then? Looking out for tech was no use since they weren't really on speaking terms with Emoris most frequent buyer. There was nothing in Polis for them, a runaway skyboy and a cast-out grounder girl. Murphy thought about taking her to the remnants of the ark. He knew they let Octavia's boyfriend stay after they saved him from being batshit crazy and the last time he had been there Kane really wanted to be allies with the grounder. But his head hurt from thinking about all the ways bringing Emori to the fallen ark could go wrong. He really didn't want to endanger her and he had nothing to offer in exchange for their safety. But as he sat against the tree, because really, he wasn't dumb enough to get lost in the woods, he realized one thing: Whatever lay before him on this godforsaken ground, he wanted to stay with Emori. So he got to his feet, swallowed his insecurities and picked up a few small logs as a peace offering.   
  
oo oo oo oo oo oo 

When he got back to their cave Emori sat huddled in the stolen blanket, with her back to the cave wall and her face directed directly to the entrance. Luckily it wasn't his plan to sneak in. He put the logs into the nearly dying fire and grinned at Emori.   
"Heya", he said in grounder. Another peace offering. Emori was trying to teach him since day two of their adventure, but well, Murphy never said he was a hard-working student. "Scoot odon."   
The corner of her sweet mouth was pulled up slightly in a small grin and she loosened the blanket around her body to share the warmth with him. They sat silently next to each other, the tips of her small hand against his clothed thigh. It was almost as if she was moving it deliberately. Maybe she was drawing constellations on his leg. Murphy tried to imagine her growing up on the ark, but she was a wild thing, so he couldn't.   
"I have a plan", Emori told him after some time, but she didn't stop whatever she did to his thigh. "We lay low for a few days. We got enough food for today and tomorrow. Even longer if we go fishing. I can build a rod from scratch. You dig out worms tomorrow." Yeah, he probably earned this task. "And then, in a few days, if we run out of food, we do another coup or two. Stock up on nuts and whatever we can get our hands on. I have some ideas, where we can get some tech." He looked at her, in awe but worrying at the same time. How will she sell to ALIE after everything that happened? "Don't look like this, John. I have other buyers. There is this girl, deep in the woods between Trikru and Azgeda territory. If her father's not there, she overlooks that I'm frikdreina."   
Instead of telling her not to talk like that about herself, he leaned over, still in awe about her ability to always have a plan of surviving, and kissed her. She just stilled for a moment, but then she was totally in to it. It was all mouth and teeth, because really, none of them had ever done that before, but it was good. Her lips tasted like berries and sharp spices and she smelled like the woods, they lived in.   
It wasn't long until not only their lips where touching. Her small hand was all over his arm, his shoulder, his face. Soon he was laying on his back and she sat on his lap. Suddenly she looked shy, but before she could move away, Murphy grabbed at her hips.   
"You are so beautiful", he whispered. Even if he had nothing worthwhile to offer her, he was so certain, that she needed to hear it at least once. Because she was. As the fire and the shadows of the cave played a light show on Emoris face, it almost seemed as if her facial tattoo was moving in spirals. Murphy grabbed her badass hand. So many extraordinary things about her body.   
"Can I?", he asked, already a bit breathless from being so near to her.   
"Yeah", she said, just a tang unsure. He took of her glove, then the layers of cloths over her upper body.   
"Now you", he heard her say, but she still avoided touching him with her now exposed hand. So he did a quick job of shedding out of his jacket and sweatshirt. Murphy again grabbed at her hand, the badass on, and he laid it on his chest.   
"It's okay", he told her reassuring her. "It's great. Can I touch you?"   
She nodded, wide eyed and tapping one of her long fingers against his chest. He touched her hip again, now naked. Her skin was darker than his, and she was soft except for the scars she wore like a warrior.

oo oo oo oo oo oo 

He had his first time that night in the cave. It was tame and soft and both of them had insecurities bigger then the galaxy they spoke about earlier that night. They touched each other a long time, exploring their scarred bodies, soft skin, hard muscles and signs of a destroyed world, but the act itself was short and Murphy was pretty sure she didn't came. He promised himself he would do better next time. Huh, next time, like they really had a future with each other.   
  
Emoris head laid on his shoulder and her hair was open, the bandana long abandoned with the rest of their clothes. The blanket and the still lightly burning fire was keeping them warm. Once again, she drew pattern over his skin, now on his chest and with her bigger hand. They were not as steady as before, because she had more fingers like she was supposed to, all in different length and forms and Murphy knew, she wasn't used to move her hand like this. Wasn't used to having it exposed much. He promised himself to change that too.   
Murphy felt her lips, kissing lightly on his collarbone. She was really sweet when she was tired.   
"Just Someday Under Nebulas Emori Might Magnify”, Murphy whispered a long time later, when the fire was nearly burned down. "Now you can remember forever."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry not sorry: I stan Alex Murphy and I think we’ve been played dirty that we didn’t get his I stole medicine for my boy Flashback 😢


	4. Polis, Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you’ll like it

  
In theory Emoris plan was a good one, except it didn’t really worked out. While Murphy sat, blindfolded, mouth gagged and hands tied behind his back, he thought back to the days he and Emori spend without doing any coups. Most of their routine stayed the same, they woke up late, Murphy went outside to find wood and all things eatable in the forest and afterwards Emori made a fire. They drank tea, ate nuts and berries, whenever he found some in the morning. The morning was still a quiet time, but now they always sat side by side and a lot of time was spent kissing.   
Afterwards they went fishing or hunting. Murphy dug up worms, but Emori was in charge of the rest, up until it came to cooking whatever they catched. Murphy got quite good a gutting fishes and rodents. They still got a lot of spices left and if they got lucky, they found some fungus, parsnip or wild carrots. Most evenings the food tasted good and filled their bellies. If the nights were clear enough, they still watched the stars, but now they were holding hands while they lay on the soft forrest ground. One night Emori asked him, if he missed his home in space. He remembers the sound of her voice and how her face looked clearly while he was being tortured and asked stupid questions about Jahas chip. That night, just a few days ago, he looked at her and there had only been one possible answer.   
“No, it hasn’t been a home for me, long before they sent us to the ground.” That night, as they made love right outside of the cave beneath the stars, he was almost thinking that she could be his home some of these days. But everything had to end sooner or later and that was why Murphy didn’t do trust. Right from the start, Murphy knew that it was only a matter of time until she would go and try to find her brother because well, whatever Murphy meant to her, he wasn’t her family. Wasn’t her people. Otan was. So suddenly Murphy was alone again. It shouldn’t have felt like this. He shouldn’t be hurt like this. You only hurt if you expected more and he clearly didn’t. But Emori exceeded his expectations and came back right on time, before he could be foolish enough to stage a con alone. It was just that it hadn’t helped him at all. If Emoris plan had gone accordingly that would have been their last coup for a while and they would have been off scavenging for trash. Now, as whoever the fuck the bald guy was, hurt him for the past few hours - or has it been days already? - pulled of his blindfold, Murphy could see through blurred eyes, that he sat among the trash Emori and him were supposed to find. Since when where grounder so keen on tech? And why was there a space capsule in the corner?   
  
oo oo oo oo oo oo   
  
It had been a wild couple of days, a dead commander, another AI or whatever the fuck Clarke and this Titus-Guy dug out of the commander's neck and Ontari, crazy and murderous Ontari, who he helped to fake it till she made it or died trying. Being threatened until he joined her in bed, the chain still rustling around his neck, wasn’t part of his plan. But what did he expect? He just learned planning from Emori and her last one had gone sideways too. Murphy was glad he wasn’t a virgin anymore, but sharing the bed with Ontari felt completely different. His body worked efficiently to please her, she was beautiful if you were able to overlook the darkness in her, but it felt like cheating and abuse at the same time. He missed Emori awfully. Murphy just wanted to hug her, cook her dinner and watch the stars. But he really believed what he told her days ago, before he found himself as a captive in Polis. When people leave, they don’t come back. Murphy might never see Emori again, that hurt like crazy and he nearly puked at the thought, but he wasn’t surprised. It was everything he expected.   
  
What he didn’t expect was to see her again in the market in the middle of Polis. Emori normally avoided the capital like she would be burned at the stakes as soon as she sat foot in there. He was surprised but elated when she really met him in the Fleimkepas room. She seemed kinda off that day, but she was clearly in awe with everything she saw in that godforsaken cellar and Murphy was just so happy to see her again. They made love next to a freaking space capsule but after he felt even more like a cheat. He tried to tell her, but unlike her normal self she wasn’t really listening. All in all Murphy shouldn’t have been surprised when he went to see Ontari later that day for the weekly audiences in the throne room and just like that Jaha stood before them to voice his request to the commander and to offer her no more faking. She just had to swallow the chip, like Emori did. Murphy was sick of it. But Ontari, power-hungry and impressionable like she was, threw him into another cell and swallowed the chip like candy.  
  
Over the next hours the cell filled with people, who wouldn’t take the chip but were too important to kill on sight. Funny, that by now he was one of those. When did that happen? But while he was at question-time: why the fuck did Emori take the chip? Murphy knew she hurt. She had every right to. Life on the ground wasn’t easy for anybody he knew, but Emoris past got him in a whole different way. Not only because she became his favorite person, it was more. Murphy knew he was who he was, because of his parents. Because they loved him and they died. His anger, his sadness, his doubts and his courage, hell even his snark was because of them. His parents build the foundation of his existence with love, sacrifices and accusations, everything after that just added to it. For Emori it had been different. Except for maybe by her brother, Emori never knew love. She never talked about her life before they met in the desert. Emori protected her own heart by staging to be a clean sheet. Murphy got it somehow. With her he had felt like a different person too sometimes. It was easy to forget betrayal, torture and murder when he felt her looking at him. Murphy meant what he said to Jaha back on that Island: Pain, Hate, Envy, those were the ABCs of his, but he caught himself growing over the last few weeks. Emori helped him grow, see that he could be more than that. Murphy was in awe of her. If Emori was able to build herself her own foundation, lacking parents and people to guide her, he clearly should be able to expand his, when the time had come. That was why he spoke up, when Indra tried to murder teach Pike, even if the guy clearly earned every cut, she gave him. Slapping and strangling him of their so-called graduation day before being send to the ground might have been the nicest thing the guy had done in the past few months. But Murphy new there was an even bigger threat: ALIE and currently she had the sole thing Murphy wanted to save, before getting out of this godforsaken city.   
  
The next hours were a blur of escaping, fighting and pumping half-dead Ontaris black heart so Clarke would live to save all their asses. Murphy might not remember every minute, a lot of time was spent on autopilot, but he clearly remembers the fear of losing Emori in the midst of this chaos and that he told Bellamy, how he cared about her enough to risk his life while saving her and nothing he ever said might be more true than that. Now that Murphy finally got her in his arms again, Ontais blood all over his hands and sweat and dirt running down his brow, he felt Bellamy gaze upon them. What a strange sight it must be to him and whoever knew him from before, that the little shit Murphy clung to a grounder girl. Murphy felt Emoris body tremble in his arms, she was crying like crazy with her face hidden behind his shoulder, telling him how sorry she was over and over again. He made a shushing sound deep in his throat. Pain, Hate, Envy and whatever they all did in the last couple of hours filled the whole room with crying and screaming. But Murphy only had eyes for Emori. She was the reason he was still there. Saving the world could bite him.   
“Everything is going to be okay, ‘Mori”, he whispered, “I have a plan.”   
  
oo oo oo oo oo oo   
  
His plan to take her with him to Arkadia - what a stupid name if you asked him, but everything was better than Camp Jaha - was quickly discarded when shit got bad so fast that Bellamy gave him a gun. For a moment Murphy really wanted to go with them, fight whatever next battle Skykru had gotten themselves into. Just for a moment he wanted to be part of them, but he couldn't. He wasn't a soldier and he was already part of something bigger than himself. He really missed Emori over the last couple of days, he was so scared of losing her and he couldn't risk her running off without him again. So Murphy grabbed the gun and when the others run ahead he just went the other way, back where he came from. He found Emori hiding in the dark, because she was still scared people would chase her away with torches and pitchforks as soon as they saw her disformed hand. Murphy grabbed it without a second thought. Hiding her hand between their bodies they scurried through the masses of grieving and arguing people. What a melting pot this city was right now. Good thing to be out of here soon. Amidst the chaos it was easy for the both of the to slip through the gate and run off to the woods. It was dark already and they decided to make good on a few miles to get away as far as possible from Polis. On their way through the woods Murphy told her what he'd gathered from Bellamy and the others about the new conflict with Aszgeda.   
"It's not our fight", Emori told him matter of factly, "Not our people."   
"We got no people", Murphy mumbled. And they'll never have, if they always decide to run.   
"You are my people." Emori looked over her shoulder, but when she didn't get the response she seemed to want, she grabbed his hand, harder than before and her pace got faster. She was done talking.   
  
They didn't find a cave that night, so they lay down, side by side on the forests ground under canopy so thick they couldn't see the stars. It was almost too dark to see their own hands, but they weren't scared. Emori was still holding his hand in a death grip and Murphy could sense that she was crying silently in the change of her breath. Murphy wasn't sure if he should give her the courtesy of hiding her tears in the dark. He couldn't possibly ask her what's wrong when he knew that everything was wrong. Everything was fucked up. She was cast-out as a baby, her brother was dead, she had been stuck in a simulation over the last couple of days and just when he promised her safety by his people, something she might be longing for, he took it from her just hours later, because he wouldn't fight alongside them.   
"I'm sorry", he whispered instead of asking stupid questions. Emoris body stiffed even further and she let out an ugly little sob. Murphy just barely remembered his parents consoling him as a child. They didn't often had to. When both were still alive, they were kinda privileged on the ark, his father working in med-bay, his mother in the library. Murphy was a fairly happy kid, just as he told Raven back in the dropship when he thought they would both die that day. He was loved. Once again this was the problem. We was fucking useless to Emori right now.   
  
Emori rolled to her side, facing him but she hid her face in the crook of his neck. He felt his shirt slightly dampen, but he was glad she took comfort in him. Murphy put his arms around her body and lightly kissed her head. He would have never thought something like her was awaiting him on the ground. Back in the skybox he seldom thought about his future and what it could hold for him. He wasn't sure if they would pardon him when he became eighteen. He had been really young when he fucked up and he didn't kill anyone with his fire, he just wanted to watch the possessions of the guard who floated his father burn, but he wasted precious air and he wasn't exactly a model inmate. But even if they would've pardoned him, life didn't hold much possibilities on the ark for ex-delinquents. Hard labor mostly, low rations, a housing in the lowest stations. Maybe he would've found a wife one day and together they'd would have a child. It would have been a hard and boring life and he supposed he would have died in space either way. Either with eighteen or an old man, just e few decades away from seeing the ground. When he sat in the stupid dropship, he was certain they were all gonna die, regardless what he told Pike just hours prior. Hopefully from the impact and not from breathing radiated air, but they lived and as soon as he sat foot on the earth, he knew that from now on he really was a survivor. If the ark didn't kill him, and the dropship didn't, if even a radiated planet couldn't, he wasn't supposed to die just jet. So, from that day on Murphy fought tooth and nail to avoid death. In this moment, Emori crying in his arms, them both surviving just another disaster on earth, Murphy was stupidly emotional enough to think that maybe he survived this long to be with her.   
"Yu're ai Kru, `Mori", he whispered into her hair. "You always will be."


	5. Arkadia Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you go :)

They fell back into the life they knew, before ALIE, Polis and Ontari happened. The first few days were easy and unbelievable hard at the same time. Emori didn‘t only scavenged a new jacket and some blankets in Polis but also some food and a new knife. Their cave was near a little creek, so they didn't need to worry about bottles to carry water in, and now that they were staying instead of moving everyday it felt almost like a homebase. After crying herself to sleep in his arms the first night after the City of Light was destroyed, Emori was okay now but something about her was off. She was still grieving for her brother and even if Murphy believed, that she only took the chip to find him, he knew from Jaha that in the City of Light there was no pain, no hate, no envy. He still thought he would feel empty if someone took all this away from him, but he also understood that for other people life wasn't about surviving and that they just wanted the hurt to be gone. Emori was a survivor, just like him. They were like two peas in a pot. Survivors, both of them. But she was deeply hurt. Now that the pain and the envy Emori had always felt was back, it was more prominent. Suddenly she knew how it felt to be content. Murphy knew, she had never been content before, a nomad, always on the run from people who saw her as a stain in the bloodline. Murphy wanted all of them to float themselves for what they did to her.  
  
They didn't talk a lot over the first few days after fleewing Polis, not like before, but they always huddled close and found comfort in each others bodies. Murphy had been secretly scared how it would feel to be with Emori, after what he had done to survive the night by Ontaris bedside, but being with Emori was nothing like that. He found comfort in her soft skin, forgiveness in her eyes and when she kissed him, he felt as if he had never been with anyone then her. Murphy was still hurt, but he decided that the Sex with Ontari didn't count. Emori war his first, his only and there was nothing to be ashamed of.  
  
Over the next couples of days everything got better, they stored their aches back into the deeper part of their souls, where they belonged for the times they needed them to survive. They started talking again over stupid shit, like the kids they still were, stayed up the whole night in the dark of the cave to fool around and before they knew it, a week had gone by after they left Polis. They started to run short of food they stole from there and strangely the forest was running low too. Granted, is was winter, but there wasn't any snow yet. Murphy was fed up with coming home to Emori empty handed the second day in a row, after he offered to go out looking for anything eatable. Stupid woods!  
"You said there‘d be food here“, he said in a bad mood. Stupidly hunger still did that to him, even if there might have been more times, he went hungry than he had been full. Even as a child times were hard some days on the ark and there had been weeks when water and food had to be rationed because some machines or whatever didn‘t run as smoothly as they should. Murphy went to the small fire in the middle of the cave to warm his achingly cold hands.  
"There should be. These woods have always been good to me“, Emori told him while lifting a stone of the caves ground. „Now there‘s not even bugs.“ Gross.  
"Well, fortunately, I‘m not hungry enough for that to be upsetting yet.“ But he knew he would be. The days after he got cast out of the dropship camp he was to hurt to hunt, as if he knew how to do that before he met Emori and he didn‘t really knew what berries where eatable and what not. He had been moments away from snacking on bugs or possibly poisonous berries, when the first grounders he met took him captive. Huh, the second grounder who had him in chains didn‘t starve him. Ontari loved to give him food to try, after she found out he was a sucker for tasty things.  
"I actually kind of miss Polis“, Murphy said softly, just because talking was better than thinking about when he would be hungry enough to look for eatable bugs, „They had this drink there. Sweet, made out of sheep‘s milk." It had been his favorite.  
"Ontari gave this to you?" What the … ? Emoris voice had a sharp edge to it.  
"Yeah. I told you it wasn‘t all bad."  
"You told me you were trying to survive."  
"I was", Murphy said, half fed up the whole situation, the hunger and a jealous whatever they were to each other, but really he got it. He would have hated it to if Emori had slept with another man, good reasons or not.  
"What else wasn‘t bad, John, sex?" Wow, now she was starting for real.  
"Emori, I don‘t want to talk about this." As sweet as she was, jealous and all, he was done thinking about sleeping with Ontari.  
"Fine. Then let‘s not." He didn‘t want to hurt her feelings, didn‘t want to hurt her. Murphy never thought he would care about anyone like this.  
"I didn‘t have a choice, ok?", he tried to explain, "Emori. I didn‘t have a choice." He saw it in the way her face opened up in shock for just a second. She understood. That‘s enough for him. He just didn‘t want her to think, he would prefer any other human on earth before her. He wouldn‘t. She was the only one he cared about. That‘s why he stood up and went to the entrance of the cave. He would take care of their needs.  
"Where are you going?"  
"I‘m gonna go to Arkadia."  
"What? Why?" Oh hell, was she really thinking he would left her over one stupid argument? He wouldn‘t, Murphy realized. Huh, seems like he can be loyal, when it counts.  
"I‘m a better thief than I am a hunter", he explained with a slight grin. He knew she secretly laughed about his nature skills.  
"I‘ll come with you." Murphy was deeply honored, for reals, that Emori wanted to stay by his sides but he couldn‘t risk to endanger her by stealing from the ark. Who knew what the equivalent to being floated was on the ground?  
"No, i‘ll draw less attention alone", he told her, but when she still looked scared of being left he kissed her softly, smiled and said to console her: "Tonight we feast."  
  
oo oo oo oo oo oo 

Sometimes Murphy really wondered whose fault it was that their plans almost never went according to plan, but in reality, he knew that it was either his heart or his stupid head that got him into those situations. He could`ve just taken the goddamn food, but he had to listen in to Raven and Abby fucking Griffin, like he forgot that the last time they spoke the doctor had him pumping the black blooded heart of the girl who held him in chains. But Murphy was dumb like that and if he still cared, so what? Who was Raven thinking she was, to decide who'd get medicine and who wouldn't? Had she learned nothing?  
  
So Murphy just grabbed the food, put it hastily in his stolen bag pack and sneaked off to take the medicine Abby needed for those foreign grounders. Murphy, not being known for his subtlety brought it right to Abby. This was no survivors move and he might have to apologize to Emori later today, but when he looked at those people suffering in Med Bay, at this girl - hell, she was a little kid - he knew he'd done alright. If not by Emori then certainly by his father. For the moment that was enough. Murphy knew there couldn't have been a lot of moments, his dad would have been proud of him, but this … this was what Alex Murphy had been all about. John had to swallow back his emotions as he sat in Med Bay, he heard Abby and Jackson talk about his dad and when Abby said she‘d expected Murphy to step up his father’s legacy of stealing shit out of medical he was oddly touched. His father had been well liked on the ark, but as far as Murphy remembered he had never really fit in. Now, leading a life on the ground and thinking back to his father, Murphy just knew that if he had lived to see the day the ark got to the ground, he wouldn't have been out of his wits like all of them were. Alex Murphy would´ve been right where he should be. Sadly, Jaha had to off him before and the ground only got his good-for-nothing son. But fuck, it didn‘t matter now, the world was ending, once again, Raven said so.  
  
Murphy didn‘t know why but he sat on the hard plastic stool in the back of what was left of the Arks Med Bay, instead of running directly back to Emori, as he‘d planned to. If the world was really ending he certainly knew who he‘d be with until it happened but right now he needed to sit right here and hope against hope that those foreign grounder lived because he stole medicine for them. He needed it to mean something. But it didn‘t. Hours went by an the girl, Adria, she got worse. Around them people where dying and then soon she was too. It had been to late, Raven had said so too, and she‘d been right. Murphy shouldn‘t have even tried to play the hero.  
"You!", he heard her say angrily. If you think of the devil, right? Raven grabbed to his open bag-back. He hadn‘t cared about anyone seeing the meat he‘d took. Who cared that he took supplies, if they just waited for the world to burn? They did, right? Murphy looked back at the dying child while Raven still tried to pass him.  
"Not know, Raven. I mean it, not now." He couldn‘t do this. He had to go back to Emori. A shame, he thought later, when he was almost back to their cave, that he‘d forgot his bag pack. No feast tonight.  
  
oo oo oo oo oo oo 

Emori was sleeping when he slipped into the cave, but she woke and stood up, when she heard him. Murphy looked at her, her sweet face, her badass but hidden hand. Radiation did that. The same Radiation that was going to kill them soon. Or maybe it wouldn‘t. On the way back to their cave, Murphy realized that the Arkers never just accept their impending death. They fought tooth and nail, just like him. Maybe they were really of the same kind. Survivors. So they had to have a plan. Of course, more often than not, their plans did go as good as Murphy’s and Emoris but if there was a chance at survival, they‘d find it in the remnants of the ark.  
Murphy grabbed for Emori and hugged her close. The day had been hard, he was starving and tired but there were more urging matters.  
"A radiation wave is coming", he told her, without letting go completely of their embrace. „And when it comes, we have to be on the right side.“  
"Well then", Emori said, as if he hadn‘t told her right now that the world was ending. She was badass like that. "Let’s make ourselves useful to them." That was his girl!  
"Yes", Murphy mumbled into their embrace, "I already started with Abby." Yeah, as if stealing the medicine had been about that. Murphy might have become a master in fooling other by their coups, but by the wills of it he couldn‘t fool himself. Stupid boy he was, he knew he‘d stolen the pills, because it had been the right thing to do.  
  
They packed their meager belongings and left almost instantly to get back to Arkadia. He had been gone the whole evening well into the night and they had a few miles to make good on. They walked next to each other, sometimes even stupidly holding hands like a lovesick couple on a Sunday walk. When they arrived at Arkadias Gates in the morning even Emori was exhausted. They hadn‘t eaten in almost two days, their bodies hurt from the exercise and the cold. Murphy counted it as luck that Miller and his dad weren´t standing guard anymore. He'd had enough of Millers sass for this week. Murphy didn't knew if he counted is as luck that he knew the kids who played guard at the gate. Riley was from Farm Station. He'd already be a cadet, while Murphy was still in the Skybox. He was a total dickhead, if you'd asked him. Darcy was from Alpha Station. Her mom had worked with Murphy's dad in Med-Bay. He knew her from way back when he still lived on Alpha too and occasionally met with the other kids to play board games. Funny that he knew Clarke and Wells from way back then too. It seemed like a lifetime ago. He'd been in the skybox almost half as long as he had lived on Alpha. Murphy was much more in sync with the kids from Factory Station or Hydra Station, who had been the majority in there.  
"Hey John", Darcy said cautious but not wary. It almost sounded as if she was afraid he'd run if she'd talk to loud instead of being afraid of him. Murphy remembered he'd liked her as a kid, she'd been quiet then too and she often borrowed books he brought from the library his mom worked at. No wonder, Darcy hadn't become a delinquent. For a moment, Murphy wondered if her parents were still alive. Probably not, it was a total luxus to still have parents on the ground.  
"Look who the cat dragged in", Riley singsonged. So, still a dickhead. "What do you want, Murphy? Steal our food again?" Fun, seemed like his latest stunt had been part of Arkadias hallway gossip last night.  
"Don't worry", Murphy tried for nonchalance, "Not here to steal your dessert."  
"We are here to help", Emori said, more sweetly than he'd ever hear her talk. What a con-artist she was.  
"I'm not talking to you, grounder-bitch."  
"Riley, stop it", Darcy said appalled, before Murphy could come to Emoris defense. "Come in, okay? We can use all the help, we can get. But, uhm …", she looked them up and down, "maybe you want to rest first or like have Abby look at you?"  
"Nah", Murphy tried to say, but Emori chopped in, just as sweetly as before: "Could you take us to Abby, please?"  
"Of course, come on. I'll take you. Riley, you okay here for a few?"  
"Yeah, don't get stabbed in the back on the way. Grounders are like that, aren't they?"  
"Oh, float yourself, Riley", Murphy said, but followed Darcy to Med-Bay. Not the time to fight with the stupid.  
  
"You know", Darcy said quietly, "he doesn't mean it." When Murphy raised a eyebrow and Emori just looked at her with big eyes, she huffed a laugh. "Well maybe he does, but he's just like that because he'd been held captive. He was tortured, John."  
"Yeah, been there, done that", Murphy mumbled. He'll never get how Pike and his people from Farm Station couldn't comprehend that not all grounders were the same. Even he understood after he got to know Emori. And they had to know, since Octavias peace-loving boyfriend had lived with them, trained with them, played guard with them. In retrospect Murphy was ashamed for the way he behaved, when Kane invited Indra and her Kru to Camp Jaha to work together against Mount Weather. Starting a fight in the middle of gaining allies to safe and survive, just because he didn't speak grounder, was maybe the dumbest shit he'd ever done. He just hoped, Bellamy felt the same, because as it seemed, he really fucked up too, when he followed Pikes strange ideals.  
  
"John, you are back again", Abby said and she sounded just as relieved as yesterday. Huh, even though he had no stolen medicine to offer her this time.  
"This is Emori. Can we stay here?", Murphy asked bluntly. He just wanted a quiet corner to curl around Emori and fall asleep.  
"We have nowhere", Emori whispered, insecure and sweet. By now, Murphy wasn't really sure if all of it was an act.  
"Of course, you can." Abby smiled at them, as if she really meant it. Murphy remembered her from before, not well, since her and his father had only been colleagues and never friends, but whenever Murphy'd visited his dad in Med-Bay on the ark, she had been kind. "You look exhausted."  
"We are", Murphy offered. "But maybe there is like some work we can do in exchange for a ration or something?"  
"You don't have to right now", Abby said at the same time as Emori tried to say: "We can do like almost anything."  
"Come on", Abbys sounded sad, as if she really cared that they were hungry. She'd sat in the council. They never cared a bit. But maybe, Murphy thought, the ground had changed her too. "Let’s get you some food."  
  
Abby gave them each a medium sized helping of some brownish grey grub that was left in an enormous sized but almost empty pot in the room they used as a canteen. It's was still slightly warm and smooth, like it had cooked for a really long time. It looked worse than it tasted and it was quite filling, so both of them ate until they couldn't even scope another bite from the bottom of their bowl.  
"Thank you", Emori whispered to Abby, who'd sat down across from them. Gosh, she was really insecure, Murphy realized. It wasn't an act at all. Murphy grabbed at the bigger hand, that she held hidden under the table top. He squeezed her fingers lightly and smiled at her. Now it was his time to protect her, after all the time she protected him in the woods, she knew like her back pocket.  
"I know it's morning but is there like somewhere we could lay down for a bit? Just a few hours and then we'll certainly earn our keep."  
"I'll show you where you can sleep, don't worry about earning your keep for today. But there is something you could maybe help us with, Emori."  
Emori looked up, startled.  
"What?", she said unintelligently. Murphy just huffed a small laugh and squeezed her hand once again. He liked this new side of hers. It really made him feel capable even if he was dead on his feet and slightly stupid with fatigue.  
"Jaha told me you had a boat. Do you still have access to it?"  
"Yeah, of course", she said, more alertness in her voice right away. "What do you want with it?"  
"We have to get to the island", Abby whispered, even if the canteen was almost empty apart from them. "We want to look for Beccas Laboratory."  
"Wait, why?" Murphy wearingly asked.  
"Lunas survived the radiation sickness. She did because of her blood. The same kind Ontari had."  
"And you want to … what?" Murphy still didn't get it. Are they trying to research for a vaccination, like the ones they gave everyone on the ark so they wouldn't get measles, mumps and rubella. He still thought radiation was something different, but if they thought it was that easy, who was he to tell them not to? After all, they were the doctors and scientists, he was just the fucked up son of a dead one.  
"We found out that Becca created the black blood when she went to the ground and injected it into herself. We will try to find her notes so that we can also artificially produce it."  
"We can leave right now", Emori offered, eager to please, "I'll bring us there."  
"No, we can't", Abby said motherly. "We don't leave until tomorrow morning. Today you rest."  
  
Abby brought them to a real sleeping quarter, like the ones he knew from the ark. It was smaller than the space where he had lived with his parents, but it had a real bed and even some blankets. Abby told them to rest once again and that she would fetch them the following morning. They should feel free to roam Arkadia, she said, as if she had to prove to them that they weren't prisoners. After Abby left, Murphy kicked of his shoes, slipped out of his jacket and laid down on the small bed.  
"C'mere, 'Mori", he said tiredly, eyes already half closed. He watched her take of some of her layers and after some considereation she took of her boots and slipped next to him under the blanket. Murphy put his arm around her belly and buried his face against her neck. He was asleep within seconds.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always wanted to know how their day or days in Arkadia played out before departing to the Island. I hope you (will) like my version of it. 
> 
> Also I really don‘t like Riley.
> 
> In exchange I‘m a sucker for Murphys dad Alex Murphy deserved better. In my head Canon he would have played out awesome on the ground.


	6. Arkadia: Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always: Enjoy and Comment, I‘d love to hear what you‘re thinking 😏
> 
> Trigger Warning: Conversation of Past Rape

They woke up slowly hours later, well rested and warm all over. Murphy was still cuddled up next to Emori, but she was laying on her back by now, so laid his head next to her shoulder, his mouth just touching the soft skin of her exposed right upper arm. Emori slept with her glove still on her left hand, probably scared about Skykru seeing it and deciding she wasn't worth keeping around, not even if she might be the only grounder they‘ll ever know with a boat.  
"Gud Murnin", he mumbled drowsy, voice still rough from hours of sleep.  
"You say it wrong", Emori chuckled, "And it's most probably not even morning, John."  
"Whatever." Murphy kissed her shoulder, before playfully nibbling at it. His arm lay across her belly, but he moved it to lightly caress her waist under the soft cloths of her shirt.  
"You know", he said, just a little bit exited, "we woke in a bed for the first time. I suppose we should make the most of it, shouldn't we?" Emori chuckled once again, but then she rolled to her side, propped herself up on one elbow and started kissing him lazily, like they had all the time in the world. Murphy knew she most probably never stayed in room like this, a bed, blankets, a door but no window, all walls were grey metal and the light was artificial and bright. They must‘ve been dead tired to have slept like this for so long. The bed was comfortable but the lighting was worse than Murphy remembered. Emoris kisses got more enthusiastic and soon she was straddling his lap. They tried to stay quiet to not attract any noisy Arkers but they had a fun time.  
  
Afterwards Emori lay particularly naked under the soft blanket with her head on his shoulder. Her bigger hand, still hidden inside the glove because she wouldn't even take it off for sex in this room, lay on his chest. Murphy put his hand above hers and lightly squeezed it.  
"I like beds", she mumbled. Murphy grinned. He did to, but he kinda was a sap by now and liked it everywhere she lay in his arms like this, stony cold ground or a comfortable bed in a tiny metal can. Murphy thought about promising her, that one they, they'll have one but he didn't. It was a useless promise. Who knew if they were still alive after the world burned for a second time? No use in promising a future, they might not have. So he stayed quiet and Emori did to, for a very long time. She just cuddled into his side until suddenly out of the blue she said: "You know, about Ontari."  
"Emori, please", Murphy interrupt her and closed his eyes. He was warm, satisfied and well rested. He really didn't want what Ontari did to him to destroy this fleeting moment of peace.  
Emori shushed him, she never did that before, and then her voice was heavy with sadness: "I do get it. It wasn't cheating. Not if you didn't want it."  
"I didn't", Murphy nodded.  
"But from now on, I don't want us to do this with anyone else."  
"Are you asking me to be you boyfriend, 'Mori?"  
"I don't know that word", she mumbled into his shoulder.  
"But you want us to be exclusive?", Murphy asked, as if there was anyone else, he would look at, when he could have a girlfriend like her. He felt Emori shrug, as if she didn't know that word to. Sometimes it seemed like there where parts of the language she didn't get, even if she spoke it fluently and without any uncommon accent like some other grounders. Maybe she just didn't know any sweet words, since he knew, life until now hadn't been sweet for her at all. He wondered how she learned their language, since she wasn't a warrior in the common sense.  
"Ai Niron", she said.  
"Okay." Maybe one of these days he would run into Octavia and ask her about it. As if … Murphy grinned. Not in this life.  
"But there is one thing more, John", Emori said wary.  
"What is it?", he asked when she didn't continue. It took a minute but then she said softly: "If we‘re are like this, exclusive, like raun hod in, we gotta be honest."  
"I always are, 'Mori", he promised. He never promised anyone before.  
"Yeah, but I wasn't." Murphy couldn't contain a chuckle.  
"'Mori, the first time we met, you knocked me down." She was the most badass thief and con artist he ever knew, and as a kid he loved it when his mother read him The wonderful Wizard of Oz. The wizard was a noob in comparison to Emori. He would have wondered more, if she didn't lie to him in the weeks they spent together.  
"I'm not sorry about that", she said, but the playfulness that would be in it wasn't there, and then she was quiet again, as if it was a moment lost. Murphy stayed silent to, but he started to stroke her hair, maybe like he remembered his parents to back when he was a small child. In the skybox and later when he went back to the ground, before meeting Emori, he tried very hard to forget about his parents. Being loved, he thought, hurt more in the end, but ever since Emori and he were more than just two lonely people sharing a cave, he tried to remember how his parents loved him. If only to do to right by Emori.  
"Tell me, 'Mori", he said. "Let’s be honest from now on, ai Niron."  
"You weren't my first", she told him quietly, without looking up from where her face was buried under his chin.  
"It's okay", he said dumbfounded. Well he assumed, she was as inexperienced as he was, but they never talked about it.  
"No, it isn't", her voice was barely audible and she stopped between words, as if she couldn't remember their meaning, "It was like with Ontari. I didn't have a choice. I did it to survive. For me and Otan. It hurt. Sometimes I think about him when we … when we. And I'm sorry, John."  
Murphy sat up abruptly and he was sorry to startle her, but he didn't know any different then to wrap his arms around her body and hug her as close to his chest as he could. Murphy buried his face into the top of her hair, so the random tear that appeared would vanish in an instant.  
"He doesn't count, 'Mori. Not if you don't want him to."  
"Ontari doesn't", she said as if just realizing it.  
"No, you are the only one", he promised. And you'll ever be, he thought, not even letting go of her a bit.  
  
oo oo oo oo oo oo  
  
It was already dark outside again, when they finally left the room they were allocated to by Abby. Both of them had to pee, they were thirsty and hungry once again, but that would have to wait until they had made themselves useful. Arkers weren't known for giving handouts to the useless.  
They found restrooms without running into anyone, who gave a shit about them roaming the ship. They did what the needed to and drunk some water from the tab. Running water out of makeshift tubes and plumbing was a new concept to Emori and John smiled upon her wonderment.  
"But how does it work?", she asked. "Where does it come from?"  
He tried to explain as best as he could while they strolled lazily trough the corridors until they arrived at the mess hall, they had been eating in just hours ago. He saw Monty and Jasper - really what happened to the dude’s hair - sitting with Harper, as if they were in the same league. Harper was clearly one of the hottest girls on the ark and those two have always been weird as fuck. Funny how the strangest of friendships were formed, while trying to survive in a post-apocalypse world. Speaking of strange friendships, Miller came to their table, hands full with drinks from the makeshift bar they sat up at the other end of the hall.  
"Do you know them?", Emori whispered, noticing him watching the other teenagers.  
"They were in the dropship."  
"Prisoners like you."  
"We were pardoned. All of us." But not everyone was worth the same.  
  
Murphy took hold of Emoris right hand and just as he wanted to turn to leave the mess hall - there wouldn't be food or drinks for them either way - Miller called after him: "Hey Murphy, come over here."  
Murphy stopped and looked at Emori, unsure if they should really go and talk to them. Last he knew they didn't really liked him.  
"What is it?", he asked Miller as he approached the table. Monty didn't regard him, instead taking a drink out of his glass, silently holding hands with Harper on the tabletop - huh, weird.  
"Hi", Jasper said instead of Miller. "Who are you?"  
Emori looked at him, startled to be addressed like this.  
"I'm Emori."  
"You just don't have any taste in guys, do you Emori? Come sit down, I'll tell you stories about Murph. Like remember the time Finn opened his 'Do you want to go out with me? Cross Yes, No, Maybe-Letter' to Darcy in the middle of class?"  
"Don't call me Murph", Murphy grumbled embarrassed. "And leave her alone."  
"Hey, no need to cause a scene, man. Here take this, it's alcoholic but filling, yeah?" Miller held out his still untouched cup to them.  
"What is alcoholic?", Emori couldn't contain to ask. Murphy in turn couldn't stop himself from smiling and squeezing her hand, she was sweet like this. Curious and in awe of the world he grew up in. The other teenagers looked at her, different stages of perplexity on their faces.  
„It‘s like you get drunk from it“, Miller explained.  
„Wow, now she really knows what you mean“, Murphy grumbled almost inaudible, but before he could offer her a better explanation, Monty spoke up: „It‘s a chemical compound, high of calories but it relaxes your muscles and your reactions get slower if you drink to much of it.“  
  
Emori looked unsure, but Murphy grabbed for the cup and held it up to her mouth. She needed something filling. It would be a while until they would get their hands on some food.  
"Just a sip", he whispered. He wasn’t sure how strong it was and didn’t want to get her drunk.  
Emori nipped at the cup.  
"It’s good", she said to Miller, “Thank you."  
"Yeah, no prob." Miller leaned back and took a small drink out of Harpers cup. “You can take it. Just bring back the cup or else Niylah will have my head. She takes the whole bartender thing really seriously."  
"Niylah?”, Emori asked, before she took another small sip from the drink in Murphys hand.  
"You know her?", Harper asked. Emori only shrugged, but looked at the bar. Murphy hoped it was comforting for her that she wasn’t the only grounder in this ship. But most probably she would be even more scared, since this Niylah girl might out her as an Frikdreina.  
"Thanks, Miller”, Murphy said and took hold again of Emoris small hand. "Owe you a cup."  
Murphy lead Emori out of the mess hall, still feeling the gazes of the other teenagers on his back. They made their way back to the room they were allowed to stay in and sat down on the bed. Their thighs touched while they shared the cup of moonshine.  
"I sold to Niylah when her father wasn’t home", Emori told him, "One time I had been careless and he was home. He said he would kill me if I ever touched foot on his ground again."  
"Stupid Fuck", Murphy grumbled.  
"Niylah always ignored what I was."  
"Good for her."  
"For me too, John." Emori looked down to her lap, while Murphy took a drink of the moonshine. He hated that Emori had to be thankful to be ignored. Thankful to not be killed just because her hand looked differently. Back when the world hadn't been destroyed, Murphy knew, they called it disabled and there had even been sport events for people with all kinds of disabilities.  
  
Emori took the cup out of his hands and took another sip.  
"I like it", she said.  
"Yeah, me too." Murphy leaned his head against the wall. "But I'm hungry. Fuck, I hate to be constantly hungry."  
"I have a plan, John", Emori told him quietly. He knew she expected him to listen closely when she shared her plans with him. Murphy liked how her elaborations got longer over time and he thought her vocabulary got more diverse, her sentences not that ticked off anymore. Huh, maybe she learned by talking to him how to speak more freely and about more topics than just conning and stealing.  
"You said there was a house on the island, yeah?"  
"A Mansion", Murphy laughed.  
"Sha", Emori nodded, "And you said in the bunker had been food. And in the house too, right? They gave you an apple." Murphy hummed approvingly and took another sip.  
"So, we stock up, get ourselves some food. And by the time your people made commanders blood for everyone, we will be among the first to get some. Then we can go to your bunker, wait until the earth stops burning and then we look for food again. Maybe on the island or in the woods. Whatever is still good.”  
“Sounds awesome”, Murphy said, even if there were like a hundred of ways her plan could go up in smoke. Probably will too, but Murphy liked to listen to her.  
“Of course”, Emori said flatly, “My plans are always awesome.”  
  
They shared the last couple sips of their moonshine and lay down again on the bed, cup carefully on the little table next to it. Wouldn't want to anger that Niylah girl. They probably should make themselves useful, but both were still tired and not too keen to go out of the room. Talking to the other delinquents had been enough for today. Murphy got, that they were a close-knitted group, Monty, Jasper, Harper and Miller. They had all been inside Mount Weather. Murphy heard stories about the ugly things that happened there. You don't forget torture, Murphy knew, but when he had been tortured, he had been alone. Both times, so he wouldn't know how it felt to connect in these circumstances. He never really wanted to be part of that group either way, yet it was strange to see how different he was to the other kids, that he went to the ground with. Murphy knew the ground changed him, torture changed him, three months of isolation inside the lighthouse bunker did. But Emori changed him too. He wondered what they thought when they looked at him and Emori. If they saw them as an item. They were now, weren't they? Lovers. Murphy smiled and cuddled up to Emori. She was half asleep, so Murphy kissed her cheek, just below the little scar she was wearing with pride, before he closed his eyes to fall asleep next to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always thought Murphy knew what happened to Emori prior to them meeting upon „Fake Baylies“, thus they needed to have the conversation. 
> 
> Trig Translation:  
> Ai Niron - Lover  
> Raun hod in - In Love


	7. Beccas Island: Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy 🙃
> 
> Also I’d love to hear what you’re thinking about. We are slowly coming to the part where not everthing is written far ahead (I’ve got 3 chapters more ready for now) and I’m totally open for you suggesting scenes or wishing for something to happen. 
> 
> So comment away 😉🙂

They woke up every couple of hours during the night, both not used to sleep this long at a time, Emori not used to a room like this, Murphy wondering if it was a mistake to come here and to take them to ALIEs Island tomorrow. But this might be their only chance at survival.   
Once they tiptoed to the communal bathroom they found earlier that day to take care of their needs and drink some tab water. Other times, when both of them woke up at the same time, they shared whispered conversations. Murphy never thought he could ever have that. Lay in a bed, directly across his first girlfriend - who he met in the freaking desert on the ground - and talk just because they could, instead of having something worthwhile to say. Murphy never thought he could click with a person like this. Even if the world was ending, with Emori by his side, everything seemed just a little bit more hopeful.   
Yeah, he was a sap when it came to her, but he couldn't help himself. She was still the most badass woman he'll ever get to know, that was a fact. Also a fact, he couldn't say no to her, when she started kissing and stroking him, even if he knew, they shouldn't, not if every moment anybody could come for them to call them to duty. But when it came to Emori and getting it on with her he was just a horny teenage boy. They were still kissing lazily, naked bodies hidden under the blanket, just waiting for Murphy to recover enough for a second round, when the door being opened loudly shook them apart.   
"What's wrong with you?", Raven asked annoyed. "Get you ass out of bed, Murphy. We got shit to do."  
"What's wrong with you?", Murphy grumbled, while Emori hid behind him, "Can't you knock?"   
Raven looked at them without saying another word, pissed off and annoyed and stomped out of the room.   
"Is she crazy?", Emori asked, slightly abashed. Murphy just closed his eyes and put his hands over his face, letting out an irritated groan.   
"I don't wanna spend hours with them on your tiny-ass boat", he whined.   
"Don't be a baby, John." Emori was already up and halfway dressed, diligent thing that she was. Murphy got out of the bed himself, strolled to Emori and kissed her flat on the mouth.   
"At least you are there", he grumbled, while grabbing for his own clothes.   
  
oo oo oo oo oo oo   
  
The boat was a tight fit for all the people Abby brought along. Murphy got it. They needed Luna and that grounder bodyguard of hers was not debatable. Abby and Jackson were doctors, if anyone could produce nightblood it was probably them. Why Raven came along was pretty clear, too. She was a genius and spent some time with ALIE inside her head. Miller and the other two guard dudes were there to protect the brainiacs, all clear, but hell, the boat wasn't really made to fit all this people comfortably. Murphy was constantly on edge, not because he was scared that the boat would drown. Well, he was: There was still a freaking sea monster in this ocean but the was irritated because of all this people he didn't trust. Emori was itchy too. She was casting glances at the people around them, grounder and arkers alike. She didn't fit any of them. You fit me, Murphy thought, but he didn't say a word. Instead he stood beside her, while she was steering the boat in the right direction. He could already see the island, while Abby was still phoning Kane. Murphy thought it was really cool, that Kane made it this far. True, he was a dick on the ark, as much as he got to know from the others at the dropship. Responsible for as many floatings as Jaha himself, but maybe he really was born for the ground. Just like Murphy himself. And Abby and him seemed to be kind of involved with each other, the way she put the phone to her heart like a lovesick housewife, so maybe the guy really changed for the better. Huh, Murphy thought, maybe he just kinda liked Abby a bit. She feed them and gave them a room to sleep, that should count for something. Either way, he was really fucking glad, when they arrived at the pier.   
"Where are the boats?", Murphy asked dumbfounded.   
"Without ALIE there's no reason to be here", Emori said casually. Murphy nodded, he would rather not be here himself. This place held a lot of awful memories, but on the other side, almost every place he stayed at did that. The Ark, the Dropship, Polis, only Emori and their dozens of caves were full of memories he liked.   
"According to Thelonious´ map, the lab is in the middle of the island, 5 miles straight ahead", he heard Abby explained, as Emori busied herself with attaching the boat to the jetty. Murphy looked straight ahead to the island.   
"Never thought I'd be here again", he sighed quietly. What he didn't do to survive.   
"Ah, you shouldn't have come. You're not fooling anyone, Murphy. You're still a dick", Raven said to him and went ahead to follow the others, leaving him standing without a chance to say anything. But really, what should he say. He probably earned Ravens hospitality, since he shot her, accidentally or not. So Murphy just shook off that Ravens comment got to him and waited for Emori to get to his side. He was really happy she was here. Emori was the only one he trusted. Dumb as it was, he felt safer with her by his side. Like he really thought, come hell or high water, they'd have each others backs. That was a new kind of thinking for him, and he still felt uncomfortable with it but he couldn't fight feeling that way. Emori just got to him.   
  
oo oo oo oo oo oo   
  
It sucked getting to know just once again how hurtful Emoris past had been because she was considered a frikdreina and it sucked even more to get attacked by drones for crossing a border ALIE didn't want anybody to cross. She really was a bitch. What didn't suck was, that for once he got a gun to protect himself and Emori. Either way, people died, that sucked to, but it was almost normal on the ground and at least nobody died who was important to Murphy or important for what they were trying to archive on this island. Murphy realized that the weight of a chance at surviving, not just his own but anyone's, laid upon all their shoulders. He truly got Emori when she wanted to part the group and go to the bunker. Her longing to survive was surely greater than the longing to save the human race or to belong to something greater than the two of them. Murphy totally felt like her, but he knew they wouldn't have a chance at surviving in the lighthouse bunker. Not for years, not until the ground would be survivable again. So both of them followed Abby further into the islands thick forest. It also sucked, that Abby - yeah he really kinda started to care about her a little bit - trusted him to protect her, while she tried to play bait for the drones to save Jackson. What didn't suck was that Raven saved the day by playing her brainiac magic to the drones tech to stop them from shooting at them.   
  
"Hey, about, uh, what happened at the beach", Raven said when they started to resume their hike to wherever Abby thought their lab would be, "Thank you."   
"Careful, Reyes. Emori's already got dibs on me", Murphy said cheekily. He saw Emori glancing at them and smiling approvingly. She wasn't blind and Raven was a good-looking girl. Murphy got, why Finn had been smitten with her on the ark. He knew, that for Emori, who didn't considered herself beautiful because of her abomination, it meant a lot that he told others about their relationship. Murphy fastened his steps to catch up with Emori. She didn't have a gun and he won't take the chance of her getting hurt.   
When they were in eyesight of the lab, Murphy stopped along with the rest of the group.   
"Uh, small question", he said unsure. "ALIE had a security system to protect this thing, right? Any idea what she was protecting it from?"   
"Let's hope we don't find out", Abby said. "Just in case, Raven, get the drones back into the sky."  
Murphy huffed a nearly inaudible laugh and Emori looked at him sideways but smiling cheekily. They really made it that far, the brainiacs and Luna still alive. Maybe they really would find a way to survive.   
  
When they entered ALIES lab an artificial voice announced the initiating of the auxiliary power. Suddenly the lab was covered in artificial white light. It really looked stunning. Murphy had certainly never seen anything like this. He shared a glance with Emori and saw wonderment on her face. Maybe she was at loss at certain words in English and some things, like alcohol, were a mystery to her, but she was one of the most fearless grounder when it came to tech. Looking at her now, awe on her face, he thought this had been worth the way regardless what would happen from now on. Emori deserved to glance at a world much larger than the one she knew.   
  
While Abby, Jackson and Raven went exploring almost right away, Miller and the other guard, Paul, went to the sidelines, put their guns away and talked quietly among themselves. It was Luna, who drew his attention. She didn't seem scared but not in awe of the lab either. Murphy thought it only looked like she didn't want to be here. He understood. If he was the last person to survive the end of the world, and there wasn't any other person there he loved, he wouldn't want to be here either. But as it was, Murphy relied on her, as did all other humans still left on this planet. So he glanced at Emori and tried to tell her wordlessly to connect with Luna. They were girls, they were grounder. But Emori pretended to not get what he wanted and went exploring on her own. Murphy once again followed her like mug. 'Course she wouldn't try to connect with her, Emori still thought all grounder would kill her in an instant if they saw her hand. Murphy shook his head quietly and looked at the monitors on the wall.   
"What does it mean?", Emori asked and pointed to some figures and forms on the screen. There were swirls all over the place.   
"I have no idea", he admitted. This Science stuff was way beyond him, but he liked to stand in front of these monitors, next to Emori and just watch. It was kind of soothing, he thought. Murphy took Emoris hand in his own while they looked at things they didn't understand.   
  
oo oo oo oo oo oo   
  
Hours later, Abby, Jackson and Raven were still heavily occupied. They took blood from Luna and got to work at the different areas in the lab. One of the guards decided to stay back with them and took charge of the entrance of the lab, while Miller, Luna, Murphy and Emori decided to hike to the house. Luna needed to sleep before Abby needed blood once again and they all needed to eat. It had been Emoris idea to make themselves useful and Murphy knew, she secretly hoped there would be enough resources to last them years in the lighthouse bunker. Murphy knew there wouldn't be, but he hoped there was enough for a good dinner for all of them.   
  
When they arrived at ALIEs Mansion, Luna went directly upstairs to look for a place to sleep undisturbed. She hadn't spoken a word to them, since they took her blood. Murphy got her longing to be alone. If it wasn't for Emori he would feel exactly the same.   
The rest of them strolled lazily through the ground floor. All the fancy and shining interior didn't get to him much. He'd seen it before and he wasn't impressed. Miller however looked at it in wonderment.   
"Men", he said, "She was really loaded, wasn't she?"  
Yeah, privileged got a whole new meaning, Murphy thought, while he went exploring further. When he came by he kitchen he rummaged through the cupboards. There was plenty of food in the cabinets and more of those fresh apples in the pantry, wherever they came from. Murphy took some of the packets and some fruit and brought them over to the kitchen counter. There was a book lying on it with pictures of cooked meals on the cover. Murphy opened it up by a few pages. It had even more pictures inside and, as it seemed, recipes. It was a cooking book. They had a old one about baking in the arks library. Once his mom showed it to him. She told him, that back when the earth hadn't been destroyed yet, people celebrated with pine trees, cookies and Christmas music. They even found some on the arks music database that day and listened to it, until his dad arrived after his shift and it was time for Murphy to go to bed.   
"Look, not only the light works", Miller said from across the room, right before music stared playing through the speakers in the room. Murphy knew the song from his time in the lighthouse bunker. It was pretty good, heavy on guitar and vocals.   
Murphy went to the stove and pressed some buttons and the ceramic glass cooktop started to heat up instantly. He turned it of once again, but now that he knew electricity was working on the kitchen appliances to, he was dead set on cooking. Murphy looked across the counter to Emori, who was watching his every move. All this has to be so new for her. Even more strange than it was for him and Miller, who flopped down onto the couch in the back of the room.   
Murphy knew it was most probably a once in a lifetime chance to stand in a modern house, a fully equipped kitchen, cooking dinner for his girlfriend while listening to music. If the world wasn't about to burn, they could stay here for a while. Make a home out of it. Maybe one day the decadence of this house would fit them as well as their caves did.   
  
Murphy opened up cans of dark red beans, white lentils and tomatoes and put everything at once in a shiny big pot, filled with a bit of water, while Emori fetched whatever spices she could find for him in the cupboards.   
"Look, I found onions", Emori said and tossed one to him. Murphy set to peel and slice it, before he put it into a pan.   
"Is there any dried meat?", he asked and Emori opened up another cupboard.   
"It's pork", Emori said warily, as if assaulted by the idea, "In a can."  
Murphy looked once again to the opened page in the cookbook. "That's perfect. Normally you make this with minced beef, but meat is meat, right?"   
"Right", Emori grinned and brought over the can and some spices she found.   
"Do you really need to waste all that?", Miller asked, without getting up from where he was slouched on the white couch.   
"We are not wasting", Murphy grumbled, "We are cooking."   
"We could have eaten that without playing around with it first." Miller got up now and went to look into the pot and the pan, where Murphy was currently stirring the onions and the canned pork he put into it.  
"Feel free to get your cold can of beans, Miller", Murphy said and turned to look at him, when Miller said: „You don‘t give orders around here.“  
Murphy stepped up to Miller, and even through the other boy was taller and most probably stronger than him, Murphy grabbed him by the front of his collar.   
"The world is ending, Miller", Murphy hissed quietly enough, so that Emori wouldn't hear his words. "If we want to make dinner once before we die, what do you care?"   
He let go of Miller, before he tried to defend himself. Miller just looked at him with a frown on his face before casting a sideway glance at Emori, who in return watches the scene on high alert. Murphy knew she would come to his aid, if Miller wanted to fight now, but at the same time she was scared. Murphy saw it in the way she held her body. Together they could take Miller, most probably, since he left his gun across the room, but it wouldn't be wise to fight at all. Not if they still wanted a chance at survival, if Abby managed to produce the nightblood.   
Miller took a step back and lifted his hands. He turned to leave the room, but stopped at the kitchen entrance. "Bryan and me, we fantasized about a life after this. About a house. He wanted to raise chickens." Miller looked down, silent for a few seconds. He wouldn't start crying now, would he, Murphy thought panicky. That would be like real awkward. "We probably won't, no matter if the world ends of not. But hey, Murphy? You do you, okay?"   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes of course, I had to have Raven barge in on them 🤣
> 
> And yes I also needed Murphy to cook some more ☺️


	8. Beccas Island, Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next ones up! Love to hear what you think about it 😊

Later that evening, the others returned from the lab. They couldn't do much more work without more of Lunas blood and she hadn't emerged yet from the bedroom she choosed earlier that day. There were almost enough room for everybody. Murphy and Emori shared a bed of course, Miller and Jackson had to share a room too, but it had two single beds and they were both guys and totally on board with it, while Paul, the other guard, choose to take the couch instead of sharing. Strangely it was a quiet evening, nice even. Nobody, not even Miller, argued over the food Murphy cooked. Instead most of them sat around the big table in the middle of the living room. They ate, more than they were used to and drank age-old wine Emori scavenged in the pantry. It was way better than Montys moonshine.   
"I'm drunk", Miller said and leaned back in his chair. "And I'm fuller than I have been in ages."  
"John is on kitchen duty from now on", Jackson chimed in, his plate empty in front of him. Murphy stopped himself short of arguing. Kitchen duty sounded quite alright in a kitchen like this, with music and Emori to keep him company.   
"Whatever", he grumbled, just because he could.   
"It was really good", Abby said, a small smile on her face, it was almost motherly, "Thank you, John. You too, Emori, for bringing us here."  
"We should get back to the lab", Raven said. She hadn't touched the wine and seemed restless to get back to work her brain magic.   
"We won't go back tonight."  
"Jackson is right, Raven. You need to rest. We all should." Abby drank the last sip of wine in her glass. Then she stood up. "I certainly will. Goodnight."

Jackson and Miller followed her upstairs, Paul went to guard the front entrance for the first watch. He would wake Miller later that night for the changing of the guard.   
Murphy took hold of Emoris hand.   
"Come on, I want to show you something", he said quietly, after filling his glass with the last remaining wine in the bottle. Together they went to the back door. It led onto a paved patio. On the right side of the backyard was a swimming pool. The water shimmered in the moonlight. It was a soothing blue light. Murphy took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his trouser legs. He sat down on the side of the pool with his feet in the water. It was cold, but thanks to Emori who sat next to him, her feet and calves bare, and due to the alcohol and his full belly he felt warm all over. And he felt content, as he once again took hold of her hand. He took another sip of the wine and held the glass out for Emori.   
"Thank you", she said, drank a small sip and laid her head on his shoulder. Murphy wasn't sure what she was thanking him for. Certainly not for passing over the wine. He wasn't sure if Emori really understood the danger they were in. That they wouldn't survive without nightblood and maybe not even then, but what use would it be to talk it over with her. Murphy wanted to live, now more than ever, because with her in his future life could be really great. He also knew that Emori was a survivor, the most badass he'd ever knew, but they couldn't con themselves out of a death wave. Two month, at the most, Abby told them, probably way less before earth became their enemy. He wanted the day's they'd still left to mean something.  
"I never had an evening like this", Emori whispered.   
"What do you mean?"  
"Dinner at a table", she said and he got her. She had him, but she was still lonely. Emori had only told him fractions about her life prior to meeting him, but as far as he put the pieces together, she and Otan were on their own since pretty much the day she was born. They never had a home base, they were nomads, not liked to be seen or heard by other grounders. Emori might have never had friends or familiy, other than her brother, to share the evenings with. Murphy thoughts went back to his parents. They always ate their rations together and even if food had to be rationed sometimes and a lot of it was bland and very much tasteless, they always made dinner a fun experience. His mother liked to play music over the little speaker in their quarters, his dad liked to talk about his day in med bay and he always asked about school. For all it's faults and quarries life on the ark prior to the sickness that got his father floated, was good. Dinner at a table had been normal for him. It was strange how much time had passed.   
"You know what, 'Mori?" he said and watched how the wind moved the water is tiny little waves. He knew that Raven was watching them from back by the door. Maybe she could even hear their words, but he didn't care a bit, while he promised: "One day we will have dinner every evening and a bed to sleep in."  
"That would be nice", Emori said and put her arm around the small of his back. 

oo oo oo oo oo oo 

They went to bed late that night and got up well into the day. The others, except for Paul who was still sleeping in the living room, after guarding the house half of the night, where gone. Likely to the lab. Murphy grabbed two apples out of the pantry and some shrink-wrapped dry crackers to go with it for breakfast. They ate in bed, not caring about crumbs. Since they could lock the door from inside, Emori was just in a small shorts she wore under her trousers and a thin shirt. Both her hands were exposed and she smiled, munching on her last cracker.   
"I like it here", she said.   
Murphy, already finished with his ration, laid back into the pillows. He had never slept in a bed as soft as this. Never stayed in a room like this, the bunker didn't count. There had been art on the wall and shiny lights too, even motorbikes and a billiard table, but Emori hadn't been there and three months of continuedly playing videos of Becca Franco and how she destroyed the earth weren't his kind of recreation plans. This here was different. They were able to dim the lights and had quiet music playing over a record player. They had sat on the floor last night and went through the cabinet full of records. Emori might be more fascinated by how the turntable worked than by the music itself but Murphy really enjoyed to listen to it. He missed music in the skybox and when he went to the ground he wasn't sure he would ever be able to listen to it again. 

After their late breakfast and a not-that-quick make-out session in the biggest bed they'd ever made out in, they went to the bathroom. Fortunately the water worked just as well as every other appliances on this island. Murphy supposed that as long as the solar panels in the desert were active, electronic and water would work flawlessly.   
Showering together under warm water was a new sensation in and on itself. There had been showers on the ark, private showers in their quarters even for Alpha Station and enough communal showers in the other ones. Even in the skybox they had shower stalls, but warm water was rationed for everyone.   
On a small shelf inside the shower wall stood some hard plastic bottles, labeled with shower foam, conditioner and shampoo. Murphy grabbed at one of them and opened the lid. It smelled good, sweet and a little bit like grass. Murphy held it under Emoris nose.   
"It smells like flowers", she said.   
"Really?" Murphy never smelled flowers, real or artificial. On the ark their liquid soap smelled bland, it's purpose only to get their bodies clean.   
"Sha", Emori laughed. "You didn't had flowers in space or what?"  
"No", Murphy said. She stilled and looked sad, as if she just realized that she wasn't the only one to not know about certain things. Murphy didn't want her to look like this, apologetic, so he leaned down and kissed her, opened bottle still in his hand. The water was flowing over their heads and down their bodies to the drain, dark with accumulated specks of dirt and blood. Murphy took some of the shower foam and started to spread it over Emoris shoulders and down over her breasts. They took time and a lot of soap and shampoo to clean their bodies. In the end the foam was white even. Murphy had never felt this clean before. The whole room smelled like flowers, the mirror over the sink was steamy from the warm water and their bodies where flushed from being under the hot stream for that long.   
They lay down naked on the soft cloths on the bed, Emori cuddled into Murphys side, her badass hand on his belly. He felt good, clean and sated from their breakfast, warm all over and sleepy. The music was still playing softly in the background and Emori was caressing his naked chest. While he closed his eyes and slipped into a dreamless slumber, he wondered, if life would ever be this good again. 

oo oo oo oo oo oo 

They woke up a few hours later, the record on the turntable had stopped playing somewhere in between. Murphy and Emori got dressed in their old and dirty clothes, before they got the idea to raid the closets. Maybe later, maybe tomorrow. They went downstairs and while Murphy looked for food to combine for dinner, Emori hopped up on the counter and looked through the cook book they found yesterday.   
"Look", Murphy said triumphantly, "I found noodles and canned tomatoes."  
"What are noodles?" Murphy grabbed at the cookbook, but gave it back after flipping over some pages. Emori looked at the picture and started to read the text slowly. There were a lot of words she didn't knew and it had been a long time since she read anything at all.   
"Pasta with tomato sugo", she said unsure of the pronunciation, "and Shrimps."   
"Yeah, we don't have those, whatever that is. But we have canned tuna or more dried meat. What do you think?"  
"Sounds good", she said. "I like tomatoes."  
Murphy rummaged in the cabinets to get some pots, while Emori opened up the canned goods.   
"Can you turn the music on, Emori?"  
"You like it", she said, while she went to the stereo.   
"What?"   
"Music." Emori pushed the power button and turned the volume up by a few notches. As an afterthought she added: "Cooking."  
"Yeah, course", Murphy answered with a small huff. Emori went back to the kitchen island and opened up a random drawer. She rummaged through it and before she knew, what she was doing, she had a row of things that sparked her interest on the kitchen counter. There was a rectangular piece of metal with a flap on top. Emori opened it and suddenly there was a little flame inside.   
"It's a Lighter." Murphy nodded to the small table in front of the couch. "Use it on the candles."  
Emori did as told and held the small flame to the candles. When they were flickering, Emori turned the flap down and pocketed the lighter in the back pocket of her trousers. She went back to her findings and took hold of the next item. It was a piece of paper , the writing on it was faded but Emori looked closely and read out load: "Panettone, Water, Flour, Sugar, Raisins …"  
"It's a cake", Murphy guessed.   
"A cake?"   
"People made it for birthdays, back when", he stopped just for a moment, "you know, the world wasn't fucked up yet."  
"I don't know when my birthday is. Otan found me in the summer, when the days where hot."  
"Where did he find you?" Murphy ignored, that only now she told him, in a roundabout way, that Otan wasn't even her brother by blood.  
"At a creek. He was looking for junk, some get's washed up. But he only found me that day. Different kind of junk."  
"Hey, hey, hey", Murphy said soothingly. "Don't talk like that."   
"Sha, Otan was even happy about. He said, I was a strik munsta. But he wasn't alone anymore."  
"Strik?"  
"Little. Little beast."  
"He loved you", Murphy said suddenly but with insistence. He needed her to believe that she was loved, just like he had been by his parents.   
"Sha", Emori confirmed, while she grabbed another one of her findings. "I did too." 

Murphy put salt and noodles into the boiling water, before he looked at Emoris little collection of junk. He grabbed at a small elastic, played around with it for a bit and then nodded at Emori.   
"Want something to put you hair together?" She took it, but put it into her pocket, a stoic expression on her face. Murphy held up his hands in surrender.   
"Got it", he said, laughing quietly, "Your haul. I won't touch it."   
"She's got you wrapped around her little finger", Raven said, suddenly standing by the door. How in the world could he have not hear her coming with her brace and all? Murphy shook his head at himself, but turned back around to the simmering tomato sauce. Raven wasn't a threat.   
"What are you cooking?"  
"Pasta", Emori said as if she'd known the word her whole life. Raven risked a glance into the pots on the stove and nodded approvingly. "Everyone wanted to come back for dinner. Better be good."  
"You know it will be, Reyes", he retorted, while Emori put the rest of the junk into her pocket, not comfortable at discovering anymore, now that they weren't alone. 

oo oo oo oo oo oo 

After dinner, Murphy was told he had to go back to the lab with Raven, Luna and Abby. Paul would guard them, but they always wanted to have another man with a gun with them, for the off chance some that the raiders Emori told them about would attack the lab. Jackson and Miller were dead on their feet, having spent the whole day in the lab, either guarding or doing some science magic. Abby was tired too, but she insisted on coming with them. Emori wanted to come too, but the others told them, they needed someone who was well rested back in the house. She would take first watch, so really, none of them could argue, even if they weren't at all comfortable at being split up for any second. Murphy kissed her flat on the mouth, before shouldering his shot gun and trekking after Paul and the woman. 

In the lab Abby and Raven went right back to work. Luna gave some more of her blood, but then she was off in one of the other rooms. God knew, what she was doing there. Murphy didn't care much. He was bored easily and on edge, since Emori wasn't with him, so he went off to explore the lab for a bit. There was an small office right next to the entrance of the lab. It wasn't as tidy in there as in the house or the other parts of the lab. On the table lay clutter, pens, some batteries, a few wires and some small black ball. Murphy took the soft ball and pocketed the rest for Emori. She liked when he brought her presents. Back in the woods he always looked for little leaves or oddly shaped sticks or stones to bring them as bearings. She still had a small collection of the ones she liked the most in that shoulder bag of hers. Murphy was just about to leave the office, when he spotted a little toy car next to one of the cubicles. He crouched down and took hold of it. It was white, wires connected the wheels to the body of the car. His father often talked about cars and motorbikes. He said his grandfather, the one who wasn't born on the ark, had been a mechanic before he became part of the space crew, that went up to the sky. He told him old tales of endless roads and garages full of cars. The only real car Murphy had ever seen was the rover, briefly when they were staying at Arkadia. He wondered how it would feel to drive it himself, his dad always said that would be the dream, if he could just live long enough to reach the ground, when he thought Murphy was already asleep from the more child-friendly things he told him as a bedtime story. Murphy knew his dad was fascinated by the ground and life before the catastrophe, while his mother was content to live and die on the Ark. As a kid, Murphy had always known, that his generation wouldn't be the one to get to go to the ground. What a freaking coincidence it was, that they were all wrong. His mom would have been furious, if she knew about the dangers he got himself into, while his dad would be more than anxious of the adventures the ground contained. Murphy grinned to himself while picking up the remote control next to the toy car. Would have been nice to be here with his dad. Miller and Clarke were the lucky they still got their mom or dad. 

oo oo oo oo oo oo

It was hours later, Abby and Luna were fast asleep in different rooms in the lab and Murphy was on Raven duty. He just found out through Abby earlier that evening that Raven was not allowed to be alone in the lab anymore. Something was off with her brain. And she found a freaking rocket, she sat in since he started his Raven-Watch mere hours ago. Murphy was lucky that the batteries of the to car he found hadn't died yet, so he wasn't that bored while he listened to Raven fail every single simulation she did in the insides of the rocket. What a freaking world this was, that they found a still functioning rocket ship inside an underground lab nearly a hundred years after the apocalypses. Murphy wondered what would be left of this earth after the second one. Would they?  
"Mission fail", the artificial voice of the rockets board computer toned up, while Raven was screaming a series of angy No's into the mic in his ear, "Exterior damage 100 %. Cargo destruction 100 %. Fatality 100%."   
"Way to go, Raven. Nuclear death wave 42 and mankind zero." Not that he was counting.   
"You want to get in here and try for it?"  
"Nah, kinda busy, actually", Murphy drove a small circle with his toy car. "Anyway, wouldn't want to be responsible for everyone in the world dying."  
"Abby said you had to watch. No one said you had to weigh in." Yeah, Murphy thought, thanks for remembering. He would rather lie in bed with Emori either way, but instead he was on babysitting duty for Raven, after her brain nearly blew up. She really was a strange one. Murphy wondered, if she had always been this angry or if the ground made her that way. Much as he heard and saw, she had her fair share of torture and destruction. Alone the thing with Finn. Back when it happened, Murphy didn't know that kind of love. By now he understood how broke she had felt and how ready she had been to offer him up in exchange for the one boy she loved with all her heart. He would gladly do the same for Emori. And he got Raven, he really did. In her pain and her angriness. He got it, maybe better than anyone else. But he would never say that out loud. Instead he put his walls up and answered with his usual kind of mean wittiness.   
"Oh, that's me: always going above and beyond the call of duty. Speaking of, you keep starting with you fuel gauge at 75%. Maybe that's your problem."  
"Pay attention. 10 barrels of hydrazine is all we had left at Arkadia. If there was more, I wouldn't have a problem landing. Oh damn it!"   
"You okay in there?" Murphy asked. Wouldn't want her brain to blow up under his watch.   
"I'm fine. Shut up." Nah, he couldn't.   
"You want me to wake up the doc?"  
"No! No. No, I'm good. I'm running it again."   
"Sure. 28th time's the charm, right?", Murhy answered sarcastically, driving his remote-controlled toy car against the podium he was sitting on. He was done playing with it, Murphy was bored as hell and he just wanted to go back to the mansion and be with Emori. She was way more fun than babysitting Raven Reyes.


	9. Beccas Island: Part III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For once, a rather short chapter, but I was very busy with life these past few days and I'm writing another Memori Mini-Fanfiction, so bear with me and the bit longer time you have to wait for another chapter. It will come, I promise.

"Ai skiv ai op … Gon nemiyon kom … Manik deya", Murphy was mumbling what he heard Luna and Raven say just mere minutes before. He was pretty sure he wasn't getting it right, less did he know what it really meant. Emori was trying to teach him her tongue for a while now but he wasn't a very attentive student and she wasn't a consequent teacher. More often than not they rather made out than going through the motions of him learning the language. But Murphy knew it would make her happy, and maybe learning Lunas meditation, or whatever shit that was after Raven went ballistic on him, could help them in the long run. In the long run, huh, as if they really had a chance. They were all out of their wits, Murphy was sure of that. It would be a miracle if they really could find a cure in this godforsaken place before the world burned down.   
"It's the intention that matters", Luna said as she came into the office, he as sitting in. "Raven needs you, John. She's been in there a long time."  
Murphy wondered about Luna feeling this compassionate of Raven. He had been surprised when she had come to his and Reyes aid after Raven went nuts after fucking up her simulation again and again. Luna had made sure in the last couple of days to be alone as often as possible. Murphy knew that she didn't liked them. He wondered why she gave them her blood to experiment on it. Was she afraid to be alone, the last survivor of a desolated planet or was she trying to be the hero here, saving them all?   
"Well, in case you haven't realized. Raven hates my guts", Murphy said instead of asking Luna what her intentions where. You don't do things like that to people you hardly know, right?  
"I don't think that was her talking."  
"Oh, no, no, it was. You know that little limp she's got. Yeah, that was me", Murphy told her matter of factly.   
"I don't think she hates you for that as much as you hate yourself." Luna voice was soft and maybe, just maybe, she was right. Murphy had been able to forget a lot about his time on the ark, the first days on the ground, in the dropship and being tortured at the hands of the Grounders who found him alone and hurt in the woods, when he was with Emori. She wasn't able to chase away all his demons. Not like Luna did to Raven with whatever meditation they did together, but Emoris presence helped him to put them away. Somewhere deep in the back of his heart and his mind, where it didn't hurt everyday. He also put away having crippled Raven. Even back then, when he had been stupid with the feeling of betrayal and wanting revenge for getting cast-out of the only group, beside his family, he ever felt like he had a place in, he didn't really wanted to hurt Raven. She hadn't even been on the ground yet, when the group decided that hanging him was a suitable punishment of a crime he didn't commit. Maybe one day, if they all lived, he could step up to Raven, eye to eye, and tell her that he was sorry. But for now, he couldn't let Luna get to him.  
"Why do you care about any of this?", he asked instead, taunting her because offence was still the best form of defense, "You're the miracle, right? You're gonna live through the radiation either way?"  
"Maybe I don't want to be the last person on Earth."  
"Really? Why? Because that kind of sounds nice to me." Except it didn't, right? Because even now, just a mere few hours since he's seen Emori back at the mansion, he was kind of missing her. The thought of them being the last people on earth, that really didn't sound so bad, though. Like Adam and Eve in a hellish paradise, burned down by an all-destroying death-wave. 

oo oo oo oo oo oo

When they got back to the Mansion, half dragging Raven, because after her seizure she wasn't really back to her full strength yet, they put her directly into her room. She needed sleep; they all did after the day they had. Murphy sighed. Raven had almost, maybe, found a way up to space, just to get her ideas crushed by Clarke losing a fucking barrel of the fuel they needed. They were all fucked, but on the way back to the mansion, Abby told him, that they weren't done yet. She would try, they still had time. Murphy stood right in front of the bedroom he shared with Emori. He just took a moment to compose himself, pinching the space between his eyebrows with the tip of two of his fingers. He was getting a headache out of this fucking day. But when he went to the room, he had to smile despite everything. Emori was sitting cross-legged in front of the huge full-length mirror on the wall. She wasn't wearing her bandana and in the reflection of the mirror he saw that her face was clean and slightly reddened, her hair was damp and she was running the fingers of her smaller hand through it. Murphy wasn't sure if she was trying to comb it or to braid it.   
"You showered without me?", he asked her, playfully scandalized. Emori grinned at the mirror and when she saw him grinning back at her in its reflection, her smile grew wider.   
"It's like seeing yourself on the surface of water or in the reflection of shiny metal", she said, still looking into the mirror. "It's so awesome."  
"You're awesome", Murphy said nonchalantly but truthful. He sat down behind he and took some strands of her hair in his hands and played around with them, not really able to braid it beautifully.   
"What have you been up to today?", he asked.   
"Sleeping", Emori grinned again. "Showering. Without you, so more water for me. I've been downstairs getting some food. You hungry? I left some for you."   
"Yeah, later", he said, for once not hungry enough to get up from his position at her back. He started to pet her neck below her long hair with the tip of his fingers. The skin there was soft, softer even than every other part of skin he touched before, being protected by her thick hair and the bandana she was always wearing.   
"Did you do something for fun?", he asked again, just to hear her talk.   
"Showering was fun", she said. "I like Water. And I like eating."  
"Duh, 'Mori. I do too", he huffed. "I played around with a toy-car today."  
"What?", she asked dumbfounded and he tried to explain what a car was and how a remote control worked.   
"I wanna see one, someday. A car", she said, looking at him now instead of at the mirror. Murphy leaned forward to kiss her and when he stopped, his face was just a few inches away from hers. He smiled, again, even if the day was shit and maybe they were all gonna die either way. But right now, all his demons, the fear of them dying along with the world itself was so deep in the back of his head, his heart preoccupied with how beautiful Emori was. All big eyes, as she looked right back at him.   
"I lo…", he started, feeling out of breath and his words got stuck in the back of his throat, but it got lost on Emori, who was jumping up, before she even heard him speaking. She was grabbing at his hands and pulling him upwards.   
"Let's go down", she said. "I discovered something." She was still holding one of his hands, as she made her way out of the room and down the stairs. There was nobody in the kitchen. It was dark outside and everyone was probably up in their rooms, fast asleep, except for Paul who might just be running around the front of the mansion. He was taking the guarding very seriously. 

Emori opened the backdoor and he followed her outside to the pool.   
“It’s warm. I heated it.”   
“What, how?” Murphy held his hand into the water and it was indeed warm, not as hot as the water in the shower yesterday but it felt good on his hands, while cold wind was blowing through the woods further down the terrace and through his hair.   
“Look over there”, Emori said and directed his gaze to lid next to the pool. Emori opened it and beneath was a touchpad just like in the shower. “I saw it when we were sitting here and I was bored without you, so I went looking. It’s cool.” Murphy grinned. She learned that word from him. Grounders didn’t say cool or badass, but he did and Emori was his girl so she did it to by now. That was hot as hell. 

Murphy looked at Emori. She was once again grinning, proud of having figured out such modern tech all by herself and he was proud of her too. While most other grounder shied away from the things, they didn’t knew, Emori was drawn to them. And she was so so beautiful.   
“Go swimming with me”, he said suddenly. She laughed.   
“You told me you can’t swim.”  
“Nah,” Murphy shed out of his clothes, only stopping at his boxers, “I’ll survive.”   
“You won’t say that anymore, if you drown.” But Emori pulled off her clothes too, not stopping at her underwear. She didn’t wait a moment, but let her body slide into the water. “But don’t worry, I’m there and I’ll teach you.”   
Murphy followed her into the water but he still held onto the cold stony edge. The water felt awesome on his body and he felt almost weightless. Maybe that was what Zero Gravity felt like. Murphy wasn’t sure if he would’ve liked to experience Spacewalking but being surrounded by warm water felt really nice.   
“Take my hands”, Emori said and he first grabbed at her with one hand before taking the other away from the rim of the pool. Emoris hands were warm, almost as warm as the water and the feeling of her different sized hands felt soothing to him. By now her hands were more normal than any others. She was his normal. 

"Just push your legs. Like I do", Emori said and he looked down. Even if the night was dark, the pool shimmered in an almost magic-like blue glow. It was lit from below the water surface. While watching how Emori moved her naked, slender legs in rhythmic moves, he wondered how it would have felt like to live in a life like this, a century ago. Skinny dipping at nighttime in the backyard of a mansion like Beccas. He couldn't imagine to live that life but he was happy to be able to for one night. Murphy was a survivor and he always would be, that was the reason he went back to this freaking island, but right now, in this moment, he wasn't thinking about survival. The only thing he was thinking about was Emoris naked, beautiful body in front of him. They could very well be the only two remaining people in this world, that was how it felt like that night. Murphy started to move his legs in quite the same rhythm as Emori did and he surged forward to capture her lips, while still holding onto her hands. He kissed him back, sweet and slow, but hungry for more. Soon her legs where slung around his hip, her back to the pool walls. He stood on his tiptoes, the water on this side of the pool was shallow enough to hold his head above it without making strange movements with his arms and legs. He felt Emoris body all over his own, her hands on his back, then in his hair. She was kissing him on the mouth and just below the point where the water broke at his neck. He wasn't thinking about survival, not tonight, surrounded by warm water, making love to Emori.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you didn't knew it, the words Murphy mumbled in the Office in Beccas Lab where supposed to be Lunas Mantra but instead he said something like: "I creep on myself. For the miracle of. A horny mistake." (If this isn't a foreshadowing to pregnant Memori, what is? -just clowning)
> 
> But as always I would really love to hear what you think about it. Comments motivate me to write faster btw. ;)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. 
> 
> I would love you to comment.


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